


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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^frotrv abtimt(n-(i mi ^yC^nrijCll und nam LLn i/ii'b.j 



GEORGE BORROW 
AND HIS CIRCLE 

WHEREIN MAY BE FOUND MANY 
HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED LETTERS 
OF BORROW AND HIS FRIENDS 



BY 

CLEMENT KING SHORTER 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1913 



00 



i^ 



fO 



Ul 



TO 

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL 

A FKIEXD OF LONG YEARS AND A TRUE 

LOVER OF GEORGE BORROW 

C. K, S. 



PREFACE 

I HAVE to express my indebtedness first of all to the 
executors of Henrietta MacOubrey, George Borrow 's 
stepdaughter, who kindly placed Borrow's letters 
and manuscripts at my disposal. To the survivor of 
these executors, a lady who resides in an English 
provincial town, I would particularly wish to render 
fullest acknowledgment did she not desire to escape 
all publicity and forbid me to give her name in print. 
I am indebted to Sir William Robertson Nicoll with- 
out whose kindly and active intervention I should 
never have taken active steps to obtain the material 
to which this biography owes its principal value. I 
am under great obligations to Mr. Herbert Jenkins, 
the publisher, in that, although the author of a success- 
ful biography of Borrow, he has, with rare kindliness, 
brought me into communication with Mr. Wilfrid 
J. Bowring, the grandson of Sir John Bowring. To 
Mr. Wilfrid Bowring I am indebted in that he has 
handed to me the whole of Borrow's letters to his 
grandfather. I have to thank Mr. James Hooper of 
Norwich for the untiring zeal with which he has 
unearthed for me a valuable series of notes including 



vi PREFACE 

certain interesting letters concerning Borrow. Mr. 
Hooper has generously placed his collection, with 
which he at one time contemplated writing a 
biography of Borrow, in my hands. I thank Dr. 
Aldis Wright for reading my chapter on Edward Fitz- 
Gerald ; also Mr. W. H. Peet, Mr. Aleck Abrahams, 
and INIr. Joseph Shay lor for assistance in the little 
known field of Sir Richard Phillips's life. I have 
further to thank my friends, Edward Clodd and 
Thomas J. Wise, for reading my proof-sheets. To 
Theodore \Vatts-Dunton, an untiring friend of thirty 
years, I have also to acknowledge abundant obligations, 

C. K. S. 



CONTENTS 

I'AGE 

Preface, .......... v 

Introduction, ......... xv 

CHAPTER I 

CAPTAIN BORROW OF THE WEST NORFOLK MILITIA, . . 1 

CHAPTER n 

BORROw's MOTHER, ........ 12 

CHAPTER HI 

JOHN THOMAS BORROW, . . . . . . . 18 

CHAPTER IV 

A WANDERING ("HILDHOOD, ....... 36 

CHAPTER V 

GEORGE sorrow's NORWICH— THE GURNEYS, ... 54 

CHAPTER VI 

GEORGE BORROw's NORWICH THE TAYLORS, ... 63 

CHAPTER VII 

GEORGE sorrow's NORWICH THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL, . . 70 



viii GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 



CHAPTER VIII 

GEORGE BORROw's NORWICH THE LAWYER's OFFICE, . . 79 



CHAPTER XIV 

SIR JOHN BOWRING, . 



PAGB 



CHAPTER IX 

SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS, 87 

CHAPTER X 

'FAUSTUs' and ' ROMANTIC ballads,' 101 

CHAPTER XI 

'celebrated trials' and JOHN THURTELL, . . .112 

CHAPTER XII 

BORROW AND THE FANCV. . . . . . ^ .126 

CHAPTER XIII 

EIGHT YEARS OF VAGABONDAGE, ...... 133 



138 



CHAPTER XV 

BORROW AND THE BIBLE SOCIETY, • . . . . 153 

CHAPTER XVI 

ST. PETEKSBURG AND JOHN P. HASFELD, . . , .162 

CHAPTER XVII 

THE MANCHU BIBLE ' TARGUM ' ' THE TALISMAN,' . . 169 



CONTENTS ix 

CHAPTER XVIII 

I'AGK 

THREE VISITS TO SPAIN, . . . . , . .179 

CHAPTER XIX 

sorrow's SPANISH CIRCLE, ....... 201 

CHAPTER XX 

MAHY BORROW, . . . . . . . . .215 

CHAPTER XXI 

' THE CHILDREN OF THE OPEN AIR,' ..... 226 

CHAPTER XXII 

' THE BIIiLE IN SPAIN,' ....... 237 

CHAPTER XXIII 

RICHARD FORD, ......... 248 

CHAPTER XXIV 

IN EASTERN EUROPE, ........ 260 

CHAPTER XXV 

' LAVENGRO,' ......... 275 

CHAPTER XXVI 

A VISIT TO CORNISH KINSMEN, ...... 289 

CHAPTER XXVII 

IN THE ISLE OF MAN, ....... 296 



X GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

CHAPTER XXVIII 

PAGE 

OULTON BROAD AND YARMOUTH, ...... 304 

CHAPTER XXIX 

IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND, ...... 320 

CHAPTER XXX 

' THE ROMANY RYE,"* ........ 341 

CHAPTER XXXI 

EDWARD FITZGERALD, ....... 350 

CHAPTER XXXII 

' WILD WALES,' ......... 364 

CHAPTER XXXIII 

LIFE IN LONDON, ........ 379 

CHAPTER XXXIV 

FRIENDS OF LATER YEARS, ...... 389 

CHAPTER XXXV 

HORROw's UM'UBLISHED WRITINGS, ..... 401 

CHAPTER XXXVI 

HENRIETTA CLARKE, ........ 413 

CHAPTER XXXVII 

THE AFTERMATH, ........ 434 

INDEX, 438 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FULL-PAGE PLATES 

George Borrow, ..... Frontispiece ' 

A photogravure portrait from the paintinrj by Henry Wyndham 
Phillips. 

PAGE 

The Borrow House, Norwich, . . . . .16 

Robert Hawkes, Mayor of Norwich in 1824, . . 24 

From the painting by Benjamin Haydon in St. Andi-cvfs Hall, 
Norwich. 

George Borrow, . . . . .32 

From a portrait by his brother, John Thomas Borrov\ in the 
National Portrait Gallery, London. 

The Erpingham Gate and the Grammar School, Norwich, . 72 

William Simpson, . . . . . .80 

From a portrait by Thomas Phillips, R.A., in the Black Friars 
Hall, Noruich. 

Friends of Borhow's Early Years — 

Sir John Bowring in 1826, . . -96 

John P. Hasfeld in 1835, . . . .96 

William Taylor, . . . . .96 

Sir Richard Phillips, . . . .96 



xii GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

PAGE 

The Family of Jasper Petulengro .... 128 
Where Borrow Lived in Madrid, .... 192 

The Calle del Principe, Madrid, . . . .192 

A HITHERTO Unpublished Portrait of George Borrow, . 304 

Taken in the garden of Mrt. Simms Reeve of Norwich in 1848. 

Oulton Cottage from the Broad, .... 352 
The Summer-House, Oulton, as it is to-dav, . . 352 

ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT 
George Borrow's Birthplace at Dumpling Green, . . 35 

From a drawing hii Fortunino Matania. 

Title-Pages of 'Targum' and 'The Talisman,' . . 178 

Portion of a Letter from George Borrow to the Rev. 

Samuel Brandram, . . . . . .187 

Written from Madrid, I3th May 1838. 

Facsimile of an Account of George Borrow's Expenses in 

Spain made out by the Bible Society, . . . 19O 

A Letter from Sir George Villiers, afterwards P^arl of 
Clarendon, British Minister to Spain, to George 
Borrow, . . . . . . .211 

Mrs. Borrow's Copy of her Marriage Certificate, . . 222 

An Application for a Book in the British Museum, with 

Borrow's Signature, ..... 230 

A Shekel, ....... 244 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii 

PAGE 

Title-Page of Basque Translation by Oteiza of the Gospel 

OF St. Luke, ...... 247 

Title-Page of First Edition of Romany Translation of the 

Gospel of St. Luke, ..... 247 

Two Pages from Borrow's Corrected Proof Sheets of 

Romany Translation of the Gospel of St. Luke, . 247 

Inscriptions in Borrow's Handwriting on his Wife's Copies 

OF 'The Bible in Spain' and 'Lavengro/ . . 275 

The Original Title-Page of ' Lavengro,' . . . 280 

From the Manuscript in the possession of the Author of ' George 
Borroio and his Circle.' 

Facsimile of the First Page of 'Lavengro/ . . . 282 

From the Manuscript in the possession of the Author of ' George 
Borrow and his Circle.' 

Runic Stone from the Isle of Man, .... 302 

Facsimile of a Communication from Charles Darwin to 

George Borrow, . . . . . .318 

Facsimile of a Page of the Manuscript of 'The Romany 

Rye,' ....... 346 

From the Borrow Papers in the possession of the Author of 
' George Borrow and his Circle.' 

' Wild Wales ' in its Beginnings, .... 365 

Tu>o pages from one of George Borrow's Pocket-books with pen- 
cilled notes made on his journey through Wales. 

Facsimile of the Title-Page of ' Wild Wales,' . . 368 

From the original Manuscript in the possession of the Author of 
' Georr/e Borrow and his Cirrlr,' 



xiv GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 



PAGE 



Facsimile of the First Page of ' Wild Wales,' . . 370 

From the original Manuscript in the possession of the Author of 
' George Borrow and his Circle.' 

Facsimile of a Poem from 'Targum,' .... 403 

A Translation from the French by George Bo7-roiv. 

Borrow as a Professor of Languages — an Advertisement, . 409 

A Page of the Manuscript of Bohrow's ' Songs of Scan- 
dinavia' — an unpublished work, . . . .411 

A Letter from Borrow to his Wife written from Rome in 

his Continental Journey of 1844, . . .418 



INTRODUCTION 

It is now exactly seventeen years ago since I pub- 
lished a volume not dissimilar in form to this under 
the title of Cha?^lotte Bronte and her Circle. The title 
had then an element of novelty, Dante Gabriel Ros- 
setti's Dante and /lis Circle, at the time the only book 
of this particular character, having quite another aim. 
There are now some twenty or more biographies 
based upon a similar plan.^ The method has its 
convenience where there are earlier lives of a given 
writer, as one can in this way differentiate the book 
from previous efforts by making one's hero stand out 
among his friends. Some such apology, I feel, is 
necessary, because, in these days of the multiplica- 
tion of books, every book, at least other than a work 
of imagination, requires ample apology. In Charlotte 
Bronte and her Circle I was able to claim that, even 
though following in the footsteps of Mrs. Gaskell, I 
had added some four hundred new letters by Charlotte 
Bronte to the world's knowledge of that interesting 
woman, and still more considerably enlarged our know- 
ledge of her sister Emily. This achievement has been 
generously acknowledged, and I am most proud of 
the testimony of the most accomplished of living 
biographers, Sir George Otto Trevelyan, who once 
rendered me the following quite spontaneous tribute : 

^ As for example, Garrick and his Circle ; Johnson and hift Circle ; Reynolds 
and his Circle ; and even The Empress Eugenie and her Circle. 



xvi GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

We have lately read aloud for the second time your Bronte 
book ; let alone private readings. It is unique in plan and excel- 
lence, and I am greatly obliged to you for it. Apart from the 
pleasure of the book, the form of it has always interested me as a 
professional biographer. It certainly is novel ; and in this case I 
am pretty sure that it is right. 

With such a testimony before me I cannot hesitate 
to present my second biography in similar form. 
In the case of George Borrow, however, I am not in a 
position to supplement one transcendent biography, as 
in the case of Charlotte Bronte and Mrs. Gaskell. I 
have before me no less than four biographies of Borrow, 
every one of them of distinctive merit. These are : 

Life, Writings, and Correspondence of George Borroio. Derived 
from Official and other Authentic Sources. By William I. 
Knapp, Ph.D., LL.D. 2 vols. John Murray, 1899. 

George Borrow : The Man and his Work. By R. A. J. Wal- 
ling. Cassell, 1908. 

The Life of George Borrow. Compiled from Unpublished 
Official Documents. His Works, Corres})ondence. etc. By Herbert 
Jenkins. John Murray, 1912. 

George Borroxv : The Man and his Books. By Edward Thomas. 
Chapman and Hall, 1912. 

All of these books have contributed something of 
value and importance to the subject. Dr. Knapp'swork 
it is easiest to praise because he is dead.^ His biography 
of Borrow was the effort of a lifetime. A scholar with 
great linguistic qualifications for writing the biography 
of an author whose knowledge of languages was one of 

^ William Ireland Knapp died in Paris in June 1908, aged seventy-four. 
He was an American, and had held for many years the Chair of Modern 
Languages at Vassar College. After eleven years in Spain he returned to 
occupy the Chair of Modern Languages at Yale, and later held a Professor- 
ship at Chicago. After his Life of Borrow was published he resided in Paris 
until his death. 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

his titles to fame, Dr. Knapp spared neither time nor 
money to achieve his purpose. Starting with an article 
in The Chautauquan 3Iagazine in 1887, which was 
reprinted in pamphlet form. Dr. Knapp came to 
England — to Norwich — and there settled down to write 
a Life of Borrow, which promised at one time to 
develop into several volumes. As well it might, for 
Dr. Knapp reached Norfolk at a happy moment for his 
purpose. Mrs. MacOubrey, Borrow's stepdaughter, 
was in the humour to sell her father's manuscripts and 
books. They w^ere offered to the city of Norwich ; 
there was some talk of Mr. Jeremiah Coleman, M.P., 
whose influence and wealth were overpowering in 
Norwich at the time, buying them. Finally, a very 
considerable portion of the collection came into the 
hands of Mr. Webber, a bookseller of Ipswich, who 
later became associated with the firm of Jarrold of 
Norwich. From Webber Dr. Knapp purchased the 
larger portion, and, as his bibliography indicates {Life, 
vol. ii. pp. 355-88), he became possessed of sundry 
note-books which furnish a record of certain of Borrow's 
holiday tours, about a hundred letters from and to 
Borrow, and a considerable number of other documents. 
The result, as I have indicated, was a book that 
abounded in new facts and is rich in new material. It 
was not, however, a book for popular reading. You must 
love the subject before you turn to this book with any 
zest. It is a book for your true Borrovian, who is 
thankful for any information about the word-master, not 
for the casual reader, who might indeed be alienated 
from the subject by this copious memoir. The result was 
somewhat discouraging. There were not enough of true 
Borrovians in those years, and the book was not received 
too generously. The two volumes have gone out of 

b 



xviii GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

print and have not reached a second edition. Time 
however, will do them justice. As it is, your good 
Borrow lover has always appreciated their merits. Take 
Lionel Johnson for example, a good critic and a master 
of style. After saying that these ' lengthy and rich 
volumes are a monument of love's labour, but not of 
literary art or biographical skill,' he adds : * Of his over 
eight hundred pages there is not one for which I am 
not grateful ' and every new biographer of Borrow is 
bound to re-echo that sentiment. Dr. Knapp did the 
spade work and other biographers have but entered 
into his inheritance. Dr. Knapp's fine collection of 
Borrow books and manuscripts was handed over 
by his widow to the American nation — to the Hispanic 
Society of New York. Dr. Knapp's biography was 
followed nine years later by a small volume by JNIr. 
R. A. J. Walling, whose little book adds considerably 
to our knowledge of Borrow's Cornish relatives, and is 
in every way a valuable monograph on the author of 
Lavengro. Mr. Herbert Jenkins's book is more ambitious. 
Within four hundred closely printed pages he has com- 
pressed every incident in Borrow's career, and we would 
not quarrel with him nor his publisher for calling his life 
a ' definitive biography ' if one did not know that there 
is not and cannot be anything ' definitive ' about a bio- 
graphy except in the case of a Master. Boswell, Lock- 
hart, Mrs. Gaskell are authors who had the advantage 
of knowing personally the subjects of their biographies. 
Any biographer who has not met his hero face to face 
and is dependent solely on documents is crippled in his 
undertaking. Moreover, such a biographer is always 
liable to be in a manner superseded or at least supple- 
mented by the appearance of still more documents. 
However, Mr. Jenkins's excellent biography has the 



INTRODUCTION xix 

advantage of many new documents from Mr. John 
Murray's archives and from the Record Office Manu- 
scripts. His work was the first to make use of the letters 
of George Borrow to the Bible Society, which the 
Rev. T. H. Darlow has published as a book under that 
title, a book to which I owe him an acknowledgment 
for such use of it as I have made, as also for permis- 
sion to reproduce the title-page of Borrow's Basque 
version of St. Luke's gospel. There only remains 
for me to say a word in praise of Mr. Edward 
Thomas's fine critical study of Borrow which was 
published under the title of George Bori^ow : The 
Man and his Books. Mr. Thomas makes no claim 
to the possession of new documents. This brings me 
to such excuse as I can make for perpetrating a fifth 
biography. When Mrs. MacOubrey, Borrow's step- 
daughter, the ' Hen.' of Wild JVales and the affisctionate 
companion of his later years, sold her father's books and 
manuscripts — and she always to her dying day declared 
that she had no intention of parting with the manu- 
scripts, which were, she said, taken away under a misap- 
prehension — she did not, of course, part with any of his 
more private documents. All the more intimate letters 
of Borrow were retained. At her death these passed to 
her executors, from whom I have purchased all legal 
rights in the publication of Borrow's hitherto unpublished 
manuscripts and letters. I trust that even to those who 
may disapprove of the discursive method with which — 
solely for my own pleasure — I have written this book, 
will at least find a certain biographical value in the many 
new letters by and to George Borrow that are to be 
found in its pages. The book has taken me ten years 
to write, and has been a labour of love. 



CHAPTER 1 

CAPTAIN BORROW OF THE WEST NORFOLK MILITIA 

George Henry Borrow was born at Dumpling 
Green near East Dereham, Norfolk, on the 5th of 
July 1803. It pleased him to state on many an occa- 
sion that he was born at East Dereham. 

On an evening of July, in the year 18 — , at East D , a 



beautiful little town in a certain district of East Anglia, I first 
saw the light, 

he writes in the opening lines o^ Lavengro, using almost 
the identical phraseology that we find in the opening 
lines of Goethe's WaJiJ^heit und Dichtung. Here is a 
later memory of Dereham from luavengro ; 

What it is at present I know not, for thirty years and more 
have elapsed since I last trod its streets. It will scarcely have 
improved, for how could it be better than it was ? I love to 

think on thee, pretty, quiet D , thou pattern of an English 

country town, with thy clean but narrow streets branching out 
from thy modest market-place, with their old-fashioned houses, 
with here and there a roof of venerable thatch, with thy one half- 
aristocratic mansion, where resided the Lady Bountiful — she, the 
generous and kind, who loved to visit the sick, leaning on her 
golden-headed cane, while the sleek old footman walked at a 
respectful distance behind. Pretty, quiet D , with thy vener- 
able church, in which moulder the mortal remains of England's 
sweetest and most pious bard. 



2 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Then follows an exquisite eulogy of the poet Cowper, 
which readers of Lavengro know full well. Three 
years before Borrow was born William Cowper died in 
this very town, leaving behind him so rich a legacy of 
poetry and of prose, and moreover so fragrant a memory 
of a life in which humour and pathos played an equal 
part. It was no small thing for a youth who aspired to 
any kind of renown to be born in the neighbourhood 
of the last resting-place of the author of The Task. 

Yet Borrow was not actually born in East Dereham, 
but a mile and a half away, at the little hamlet of 
Dumpling Green, in what was then a glorious wilder- 
ness of common and furze bush, but is now a quiet 
landscape of fields and hedges. You will find the 
home in which the author of Lavengro first saw the 
light without much difficulty. It is a fair-sized farm- 
house, with a long low frontage separated from the 
road by a considerable strip of garden. It suggests a 
prosperous yeoman class, and I have known farm- 
houses in East Anglia not one whit larger dignified by 
the name of ' hall.' Nearly opposite is a pond. The 
trim hedges are a delight to us to-day, but you must 
cast your mind back to a century ago when they 
were entirely absent. The house belonged to George 
Borrow's maternal grandfather, Samuel Perfrement, 
who farmed the adjacent land at this time. Samuel 
and Mary Perfrement had eight children, the third of 
whom, Ann, was born in 1772. 

In February 1793 Ann Perfrement, aged twenty- 
one, married Thomas Borrow, aged thirty-five, in the 
Parish Church of East Dereham, and of the two 
children that were born to them George Henry 
Borrow was the younger. Thomas Borrow was the 
son of one John Borrow of St. Cleer in Cornwall, who 



CAPTAIN BORROAV 3 

died before this child was born, and is described by his 
grandson ^ as the scion ' of an ancient but reduced 

^ In the jesiY 1870 Borrow was asked for material for a biography by the 
editor of Men of the Time, a publication which many years later was incoi*- 
porated in the present Who's Who. He drew up two drafts in his own 
handwriting, which are so interesting, and yet vary so much in certain 
particulars, that we are tempted to print both here, or at least that part of 
the second draft that differs from the first. The concluding passages of both 
drafts are alike. The biography as it stands in the 1871 edition of 3fe7i of 
the Time appears to have been compiled from the earlier of these drafts. It 
must have been another copy of Draft No. 1 that was forwarded to the 
editor : 

Draft I. — George Henry Borrow, born at East Dereham in the county 
of Norfolk in the early part of the present century. His father was a 
military officer, with whom he travelled about most parts of the United 
Kingdom. He was at some of the best schools in England, and also for 
about two years at the High School at Edinburgh. In 1818 he was articled 
to an eminent solicitor at Norwich, with whom he continued five years. He 
did not, however, devote himself much to his profession, his mind being 
much engrossed by philology, for which at a very early period he had shown 
a decided inclination, having when in Ireland acquired the Irish language. 
At the age of twenty he knew little of the law, but was well versed in 
languages, being not only a good classical scholar but acquainted with 
French, Italian, Spanish, all the Celtic and Gothic dialects, and also with 
the peculiar language of the English Romany Chals or Gypsies. This 
speech, which, though broken and scanty, exhibits evident signs of high 
antiquity, he had picked up amongst the wandering tribes with whom he 
had formed acquaintance on a wild heath near Norwich, where they were in 
the habit of encamping. At the expiration of his clerkship, which occurred 
shortly after the death of his father, he betook himself to London, and 
endeavoured to get a livelihood by literature. For some time he was a hack 
author. His health failing he left London, and for a considerable time 
lived a life of roving adventure. In the year 1833 he entered the service of 
he British and Foreign Bible Society, and being sent to Russia edited at 
Saint Petersburg the New Testament in the Manchu or Chinese Tartar. 
Whilst at Saint Petersburg he published a book called Targum, consisting 
of metrical translations from thirty languages. He was subsequently for 
some years agent of the Bible Society in Spain, where he was twice 
imprisoned for endeavouring to circulate the Gospel. In Spain he mingled 
much with the Calore or Zincali, called by the Spaniards Gitanos or Gypsies, 
whose language he found to be much the same as that of the English 
Romany. At Madrid he edited the New Testament in Spanish, and trans- 
lated the Gospel of Saint Luke into the language of the Zincali. Leaving 
the service of the Bible Society he returned to England in 1839, and shortly 
afterwards married a Suffolk lady. In 1841 he published The Zincali, or an 



4 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Cornish family, tracing descent from the de Burghs, 
and entitled to carry their arms.' This claim, of which 

account of the Gypsies of Spain, with a vocabulary of their language, which 
he proved to be closely connected with the Sanskrit. This work obtained 
almost immediately a European celebrity, and was the cause of many learned 
works being published on the continent on the subject of the Gypsies. In 
1842 he gave to the world The Bible in Spain, or an account of an attempt to 
circulate the Gospel in the peninsula, a work which received a warm and 
eloquent eulogium from Sir Robert Peel in the House of Commons. In 
1844 he was wandering amongst the Gypsies of Hungary, ^V^alachia, and 
Turkey, gathering up the words of their respective dialects of the Romany, 
and making a collection of their songs. In 1851 he published Lavengro, in 
which he gives an account of his early life, and in 1857 The Romany Rye, a 
sequel to the same. His latest publication is Wild Wales. He has written 
many other works, some of which are not yet published. He has an estate 
in Suffolk, but spends the greater part of his time in wandering on foot 
through various countries. 

Draft II. — George Henry Borrow was born at East Dereham in the 
county of Norfolk on the 5th July 1803. His father, Thomas Borrow, who 
died captain and adjutant of the West Norfolk Militia, was of an ancient 
but reduced Cornish family, tracing descent from the de Burghs, and entitled 
to carry their arms. His mother, Ann Perfrement, was a native of Norfolk, 
and descended from a family of French Protestants banished from France on 
the revocation of the edict of Nantes. He was the youngest of two sons. 
His brother, John Thomas, who was endowed with various and very remark- 
able talents, died at an early age in Mexico. Both the brothers had the 
advantage of being at some of the first schools in Britain. The last at which 
they were placed was the Grammar School at Norwich, to which town their 
father came to reside at the termination of the French war. In the year 
1818 George Borrow was articled to an eminent solicitor in Norwich, with 
whom he continued five years. He did not devote himself much to his pro- 
fession, his mind being engrossed by another and very different subject — 
namely philology, for which at a very early period he had shown a decided 
inclination, having when in Ireland with his father acquired the Irish 
language. At the expiration of his clerkship he knew little of the law, but 
was well versed in languages, being not only a good Greek and Latin scholar, 
but acquainted with French, Italian, and Spanish, all the Celtic and Gothic 
dialects, and likewise with the peculiar language of tlie English Romany 
Chals or Gypsies. This speech or jargon, amounting to about eleven hundred 
and twenty-seven words, he had picked up amongst the wandering tribes 
with whom he had formed acquaintance on Mousehold, a wild heath near 
Norwich, where they were in the habit of encamping. By the time his clerk- 
ship was expired his father was dead, and he had little to depend upon but 
the exercise of his abilities such as they were. In 1823 he betook himself 



CAPTAIN BORROW 5 

I am thoroughly sceptical, is endorsed by Dr. Knapp,^ 
who, however, could find no trace of the family earlier 
than 1678, the old parish registers having been de- 
stroyed. When Thomas Borrow was born the family 
were in any case nothing more than small farmers, and 
Thomas Borrow and his brothers were working on the 
land in the intervals of attending the parish school. At 
the age of eighteen Thomas was apprenticed to a maltster 
at Liskeard, and about this time he joined the local Militia. 
Tradition has it that his career as a maltster was cut 
short by his knocking his master down in a scrimmage. 
The victor fled from the scene of his prowess, and 
enlisted as a private soldier in the Coldstream Guards. 
This was in 1783, and in 1792 he was transferred to 
the West Norfolk Militia ; hence liis appearance at 
East Dereham, where, now a Serjeant, his occupations 
for many a year were recruiting and drilling.^ It is 
recorded that at a theatrical performance at East 
Dereham he first saw, presumably on the stage of the 
county-hall, his future wife — Ann Perfrement. She 
was, it seems, engaged in a minor part in a travelling 
company, not, we may assume, altogether with the 
sanction of her father, who, in spite of his inheritance 
of French blood, doubtless shared the then very strong 
English prejudice against the stage. However, Ann 

to London^ and endeavoured to obtain a livelihood by literature. For some 
time he was a hack author, doing common work for booksellers. For one in 
particular he prepared an edition of the Newgate Calendar, from the carefu 
study of which he has often been heard to say that he first learned to write 
genuine English. His health failed, he left London, and for a considerable 
time he lived a life of roving adventure. 

^ Knapp's Life of Borrow, vol. i. p. G. 

2 The writer recalls at his own school at Downham Market in Norfolk an 
old Crimean Veteran — Serjeant Cauham — drilling the boys each week, thus 
supplementing his income precisely in the same manner as did Serjeant 
Borrow. 



6 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

was one of eight children, and had, as we shall find in 
after years, no inconsiderable strength of character, and 
so may well at twenty years of age have decided upon 
a career for herself. In any case we need not press 
too hard the Cornish and French origin of George 
Borrow to explain his wandering tendencies, nor need 
we wonder at the suggestion of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
that he was ' supposed to be of gypsy descent by the 
mother's side.' You have only to think of the father, 
whose work carried him from time to time to every 
corner of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of the 
mother with her reminiscence of life in a travelling 
theatrical company, to explain in no small measure the 
glorious vagabondage of George Borrow. 

Behold then Thomas Borrow and Ann Perfrement 
as man and wife, he being thirty-five years of age, she 
twenty-one. A roving, restless fife was in front of the 
pair for many a day, the West Norfolk Militia being 
stationed in some eight or nine separate towns within 
the interval of ten years between Thomas Borrow 's 
marriage and his second son's birth. The first child, 
John Thomas Borrow, was born on the 15th April 
1801.^ The second son, George Henry Borrow, the 
subject of this memoir, was born in his grandfather's 
house at Dumpling Green, East Dereham, his mother 
having found a natural refuge with her father while 
her husband was busily recruiting in Norfolk. The 
two children passed with their parents from place to 
place, and in 1809 we find them once again in East 

' The date has always hitherto been wrongly given. I find it in one of 
Ann Borrow's note-books^ but although every vicar of every parish in 
Chelmsford and Colchester has searched the registers for me^ with agreeable 
courtesy, I cannot discover a record of John's birthplace, and am com- 
pelled to the belief that Dr. Knapp was wrong in suggesting one or other 
of these towns. 



CAPTAIN BORROW 7 

Dereham. From his son's two books, Lavengro and 
Wild Wales, we can trace the father's later wanderings 
until his final retirement to Norwich on a pension. In 
1810 the family were at Norman Cross in Huntingdon- 
shire, when Captain Borrow had to assist in guarding 
the French prisoners of war ; for it was the stirring epoch 
of the Napoleonic conflict, and within the temporary 
prison ' six thousand French and other foreigners, 
followers of the Grand Corsican, were now immured.' 

What a strange appearance had those mighty casernes, with 
their blank blind walls, without windows or grating, and their 
slanting roofs, out of which, through orifices where the tiles had 
been removed, would be protruded dozens of grim heads, feasting 
their prison-sick eyes on the wide expanse of country unfolded 
from that airy height. Ah ! there was much misery in those 
casernes ; and from those roofs, doubtless, many a wistful look 
was turned in the direction of lovely France. Much had the poor 
inmates to endure, and much to complain of, to the disgrace of 
England be it said — of England, in general so kind and bountiful. 
Rations of carrion meat, and bread from which I have seen the 
very hounds occasionally turn away, were unworthy entertainment 
even for the most ruffian enemy, when helpless and a captive ; and 
such, alas ! was the fare in those casernes. 

But here we have only to do with Thomas Borrow, 
of whom we get many a quaint glimpse in Lavengro, 
our first and our last being concerned with him in the 
one quality that his son seems to have inherited, as the 
associate of a prize-fighter — Big Ben Brain. Borrow 
records in his opening chapter that Ben Brain and 
his father met in Hyde Park probably in 1790, 
and that after an hour's conflict ' the champions shook 
hands and retired, each having experienced quite 
enough of the other's prowess.' Borrow further relates 
that four months afterwards Brain 'died in the arms 
of my father, who read to him the Bible in his last 



8 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

moments.' Dr. Knapp finds Borrow in one of his 
many inaccuracies or rather ' imaginings ' here, as Brain 
did not die until 1794. More than once in his after 
years the old soldier seems to have had a shy pride 
in that early conflict, although the piety which seems 
to have come to him with the responsibilities of wife 
and children led him to count any recalling of the 
episode as a 'temptation.' When Borrow was about 
thirteen years of age, he overheard his father and mother 
discussing their two boys, the elder being the father's 
favourite and George the mother's : 

' I will hear nothing against my first-born,"' said my father, 
'even in the way of insinuation: he is my joy and pride; the 
very image of myself in my youthful days, long before I fought 
Big Ben, though perhaps not quite so tall or strong built. As 
for the other, God bless the child ! I love him, I'm sure ; but 
I must be blind not to see the difference between him and his 
brother. Why, he has neither my hair nor my eyes; and then 
his countenance ! why, 'tis absolutely swarthy, God forgive me ! 
I had almost said like that of a gypsy, but I have nothing to 
say against that ; the boy is not to be blamed for the colour of 
his face, nor for his hair and eyes; but, then, his ways and 
manners ! — I confess I do not like them, and that they give me 
no little uneasiness.' ^ 

Borrow throughout his narrative refers to his father 
as ' a man of excellent common sense,' and he quotes 
the opinion of William Taylor, who had rather a bad 
reputation as a ' freethinker ' with all the church -going 
citizens of Norwich, with no little pride. Borrow is 
of course the ' young man ' of the dialogue. He was 
then eighteen years of age : 

' Not so, not so,' said the young man eagerly ; ' before I knew 
you I knew nothing, and am still very ignorant ; but of late my 

^ Lavengro, ch. xiv. 



CAPTAIN BORROW 9 

father's health has been very much broken, and he requires 
attention ; his spirits also have become low, which, to tell you 
the truth, he attributes to my misconduct. He says that I have 
imbibed all kinds of strange notions and doctrines, which will, 
in all probability, prove my ruin, both here and hereafter ; which 
— which ' 

' Ah ! I understand,' said the elder, with another calm whiff. 
' I have always had a kind of respect for your father, for there is 
something remarkable in his appearance, something heroic, and I 
would fain have cultivated his acquaintance; the feeling, how- 
ever, has not been reciprocated. I met him the other day, up 
the road, with his cane and dog, and saluted liim ; he did not 
return my salutation.' 

' He has certain opinions of his own,' said the youth, ' which are 
widely different from those which he has heard that you profess.' 

' I respect a man for entertaining an opinion of his own,' said 
the elderly individual, ' I hold certain opinions ; but I should 
not respect an individual the more for adopting them. All I wish 
for is tolerance, which I myself endeavour to practise. I have 
always loved the truth, and sought it ; if I have not found it, the 
greater my misfortune.' ^ 

When Borrow is twenty years of age we have another 
glimpse of father and son, the father in his last illness, 
the son eager as usual to draw out his parent upon 
the one subject that appeals to his adventurous spirit, 
* I should like to know something about Big Ben,' he 
says : 

' You are a strange lad,' said my father ; ' and though of late 
I have begun to entertain a more favourable opinion than hereto- 
fore, there is still much about you that I do not understand. 
Why do you bring up that name ? Don't you know that it is 
one of my temptations ? You wish to know something about 
him .? Well, I will oblige you this once, and then farewell to such 
vanities — something about him. I will tell you — his — skin when 
he flung off his clothes — and he had a particular knack in doing 

* Lavengro, ch. xxiii. 



10 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

so — his skin, when he bared his mighty chest and back for combat ; 

and when he fought he stood, so if I remember right — his 

skin, I say, was brown and dusky as that of a toad. Oh me ! I 
wish my elder son was here ! "* 

Concerning the career of Borrow's father there seem to 
be no documents other than one contained in Lavengro, 
yet no Life of Borrow can possibly be complete that 
does not draw boldly upon the son's priceless tributes. 
And so we come now to the last scene in the career of 
the elder Borrow — his death-bed — which is also the 
last page of the first volume of Lavengro. George 
Borrow's brother has arrived from abroad. The little 
house in Willow Lane, Norwich, contained the mother 
and her two sons sorrowfully awaiting the end, which 
came on 28th February 1824. 

At the dead hour of night — it might be about two — I was 
awakened from sleep by a cry which sounded from the room 
immediately below that in which I slept. I knew the cry — it was 
the cry of my mother ; and I also knew its import, yet I made no 
effort to rise, for I was for the moment paralysed. Again the cry 
sounded, yet still I lay motionless — the stupidity of horror was 
upon me. A third time, and it was then that, by a violent effort, 
bursting the spell which appeared to bind me, I sprang from the 
bed anfl rushed downstairs. My mother was running wildly about 
the room ; she had awoke and found my father senseless in the 
bed by her side. I essayed to raise him, and after a few efforts 
supported him in the bed in a sitting posture. My brother now 
rushed in, and, snatching up a light that was burning, he held it 
to my father's face. ' The surgeon ! the surgeon ! ■" he cried ; then, 
dropping the light, he ran out of the room, followed by my 
mother ; I remained alone, supporting the senseless form of my 
father ; the light had been extinguished by the fall, and an almost 
total darkness reigned in the room. The form pressed heavily 
against my bosom ; at last methought it moved. Yes, I was 
right; there was a heaving of the breast, and then a gasping. 
Were those words which I heard ? Yes, they were words, low and 



CAPTAIN BORROW 11 

indistinct at first, and then audible. The mind of the dying man 
was reverting to former scenes. I heard him mention names 
which I had often heard him mention before. It was an awful 
moment ; I felt stupefied, but I still contrived to support my dying 
father. There was a pause ; again my father spoke : I heard him 
speak of Minden, and of Meredith, the old Minden serjeant, and 
then he uttered another name, which at one period of his life was 

much on his lips, the name of ; but this is a solemn moment ! 

There was a deep gasp : I shook, and thought all was over ; but I 
was mistaken — my father moved, and revived for a moment ; he 
supported himself in bed without my assistance. I make no doubt 
that for a moment he was perfectly sensible, and it was then that, 
clasping his hands, he uttered another name clearly, distinctly — it 
was the name of Christ. With that name upon his lips the brave 
old soldier sank back upon my bosom, and, with his hands still 
clasped, yielded up his soul. 

Did Borrow's father ever really fight Big Ben Brain or 
Bryan in Hyde Park, or is it all a fantasy of the 
artists imagining? We shall never know. Borrow 
called his Lavengr'o ' An Autobiography ' at one stage 
of its inception, although he wished to repudiate the 
autobiographical nature of his story at another. Dr. 
Knapp in his anxiety to prove that Borrow wrote his 
own memoirs in Lavengro and Romany Rye tells us 
that he had no creative faculty — an absurd proposition. 
But I think we may accept the contest between Ben 
Brain and Thomas Borrow, and what a revelation of 
heredity that impressive death-bed scene may be 
counted. Borrow on one occasion in later life declared 
that his favourite books were the Bible and the Newgate 
Calendar. We know that he specialised on the Bible 
and Prize-Fighting in no ordinary fashion — and here 
we see his father on his death-bed struggling between 
the religious sentiments of his maturity and the one 
great worldly escapade of his early manhood. 



CHAPTER II 

BORROWS MOTHER 

Throughout his whole life George Borrow adored his 
mother, who seems to have developed into a woman of 
great strength of character far remote from the pretty- 
play-actor who won the heart of a young soldier at 
East Dereham in the last years of the eighteenth 
century. We would gladly know something of the 
early years of Ann Perfrement. Her father was a 
farmer, whose farm at Dumpling Green we have already 
described. He did not, however, ' farm his own little 
estate ' as Borrow declared. The grandfather — a French 
Protestant — came, if we are to believe Borrow, from 
Caen in Normandy after the Revocation of the Edict 
of Nantes, but there is no documentary evidence to 
support the contention. However, the story of the 
Huguenot immigration into England is clearly bound 
up with Norwich and the adjacent district. And so 
we may well take the name of * Perfrement ' as con- 
clusive evidence of a French origin, and reject as utterly 
untenable the not unnatural suggestion of Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, that Borrow 's mother was ' of gypsy 
descent.' ^ She was one of the eight children of Samuel 

' 24th May 1856. Diiiiug at Mr. Ratlibone's oue evening last week (21st 
May), it was mentioned that Borrow, author of The Bible in Spain, is supposed 
to be of gypsy descent by the mother's side. Hereupon Mr. Martineau 
mentioned that he had been a school-fellow of Borrow, and though he had 

12 



BORROWS MOTHER 13 

and Mary Perfrement, all of whom seem to have devoted 
their lives to East Anglia.^ We owe to Dr. Knapp's 
edition of Lavengro one exquisite glimpse of Ann's 
girlhood that is not in any other issue of the book. 
Ann's elder sister, curious to know if she was ever to 
be married, falls in with the current superstition that 
she must wash her linen and ' watch ' it drying before 
the fire between eleven and twelve at night. Ann 
Perfrement was ten years old at the time. The two 
girls walked over to East Dereham, purchased the 
necessary garment, washed it in the pool near the 
house that may still be seen, and watched and 
watched. Suddenly when the clock struck twelve they 
heard, or thought they heard, a footstep on the path, the 
wind howled, and the elder sister sprang to the door, 
locked and bolted it, and then fell in convulsions on the 
floor. The superstition, which Borrow seems to have 
told his mother had a Danish origin, is common enough 
in Ireland and in Celtic lands. It could scarcely have 
been thus rehearsed by two Norfolk children had they 
not had the blood of a more imaginative race in their 
veins. In addition to this we find more than one 
effective glimpse of Borrow's mother in Lavengro. 
We have already noted the episode in which she takes 
the side of her younger boy against her husband, with 
whom John was the favourite. We meet her again in 
the following dialogue, with its pathetic allusions to 
Dante and to the complaint — a kind of nervous exhaus- 

never heard of liis gypsy blood, he thought it probable^ from Borrow's traits 
of character. He said that Borrow had once run away from school, and 
carried with him a party of other boys, meaning to lead a wandering life 
{The English Note-books of Nathaniel Hawthorne, vol. ii. 1858). 

1 Samuel and Maria Perfrement were married in 17GG^ the latter to 
John Burcham. Two of her brothers survived Ann Borrow^ Samuel Perfre- 
ment dying in 1864 and Philip in 1867. 



14 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

tion which he called ' the horrors ' — that was to trouble 
Borrow all his days : 

' What ails you, my child ? ' said a mother to her son, as he lay 
on a couch under the influence of the dreadful one ; ' what ails 
you ? you seem afraid ! ' 

Boy. And so I am ; a dreadful fear is upon me. 

Mother. But of what ? there is no one can harm you ; of what 
are you apprehensive ? 

Boy. Of nothing that I can express. I know not what I am 
afraid of, but afraid I am. 

Mother. Perhaps you see sights and visions. I knew a lady 
once who was continually thinking that she saw an armed man 
threaten her, but it was only an imagination, a phantom of the 
brain. 

Boy. No armed man threatens me ; and 'tis not a thing like 
that would cause me any fear. Did an armed man threaten me I 
would get up and fight him ; weak as I am, I would wish for 
nothing better, for then, perhaps, I should lose this fear ; mine is 
a dread of I know not what, and there the horror lies. 

Mother. Your forehead is cool, and your speech collected. Do 
you know where you are ? 

Boy. I know where I am, and I see things just as they are ; 
you are beside me, and upon the table there is a book which was 
written by a Florentine ; all this I see, and that there is no ground 
for being afraid. I am, moreover, quite cool, and feel no pain — 
but, but 

And then there was a burst of ' gemiti, sospiri ed alti guai.' 
Alas, alas, poor child of clay ! as the sparks fly upward, so wast 
thou born to sorrow — Onward ! ^ 

Our next glimpse of Mrs. Borrow is when after his 
father's death George had shouldered his knapsack and 
made his way to London to seek his fortune by litera- 
ture. His elder brother had remained at home, 
determined upon being a painter, but joined George in 

^ Lavengro, ch. xviii. 



BORROWS MOTHER 15 

London, leaving the widowed mother momentarily 
alone in Norwich. 

' And how are things going on at home ? ' said I to my brother, 
after we had kissed and embraced. ' How is my mother, and how 
is the dog?' 

' My mother, thank God, is tolerably well,' said my brother, 
' but very much given to fits of crying. As for the dog, he is not 
so well ; but we will talk more of these matters anon,' said my 
brother, again glancing at the breakfast things. ' I am very 
hungry, as you may suppose, after having travelled all night.' 

Thereupon I exerted myself to the best of my ability to perform 
the duties of hospitality, and I made my brother welcome — I may 
say more than welcome ; and when the rage of my brother's hunger 
was somewhat abated, we recommenced talking about the matters of 
our little family, and my brother told me much about my mother ; 
he spoke of her fits of crying, but said that of late the said fits 
of crying had much diminished, and she appeared to be taking 
comfort ; and, if I am not much mistaken, my brother told me 
that my mother had of late the prayer-book frequently in her 
hand, and yet oftener the Bible.^ 

Ann Borrow lived in Willow Lane, Norwich, for 
thirty-three years. That Borrow was a devoted 
husband these pages will show. He was also a de- 
voted son. When he had made a prosperous marriage 
he tried hard to persuade his mother to live with him 
at Oulton, but all in vain. She had the wisdom to 
see that such an arrangement is rarely conducive to 
a son's domestic happiness. She continued to live in 
the little cottage made sacred by many associations 
until almost the end of her days. Here she had lived 
in earher years with her husband and her two ambitious 
boys, and in Norwich, doubtless, she had made her 
own friendships, although of these no record remains. 
The cottage still stands in its modest court, but is 

^ Luvengro, ch. xxxvii. 



16 GEORGE BORROAV AND HIS CIRCLE 

at the moment untenanted. There is a letter extant 
from Ceciha Lucy Brightwell, who wrote The Life 
of Mrs. Opie, to Mary Borrow at Oulton, when 
Mrs. Borrow the elder had gone to live there, which 
records the fact that in 1851, two years after Mrs. 
Borrow had left the cottage in A¥illow Lane, it had 
already changed its appearance. Mrs. Brightwell 
writes : 

Give my kind love to dear mother. Tell her I went past her 
house to-day and looked up the court. It is quite changed : all 
the trees and the ivy taken away. 

The house was the property of Thomas King, a 
carpenter. You enter from Willow Lane through a 
covered passage into what was then known as King's 
Court. Here the little house faces you, and you 
meet it with a peculiarly agreeable sensation, recalling 
more than one incident in Lavengro that transpired 
there. In 1897 the then mayor made the one attempt 
of his city of a whole half century to honour Borrow 
by calling this court Borrow's Court — thereby con- 
ferring a ridiculously small distinction upon Borrow,^ 
and removing a landmark connected with one of its 
own worthy citizens. For Thomas King, the carpenter, 
was in direct descent in the maternal line from the 
family of Parker, which gave to Norwich one of its 
most distinguished sons in the famous Archbishop of 
Queen Elizabeth's day. He extended his business as 
carpenter sufficiently to die a prosperous builder. Of 
his two sons one, also named Thomas, became physician 
to Prince Talleyrand, and married a sister of John 

1 In May 1913 the Lord Mayor of Norwich (Mr. A. M. Samuel) purchased 
the Borrow house in Willow Lane for £375, and gave it to the city for the 
purpose of a Borrow Museum. 




THE BORROW HOUSE, NORWICH 

The house is situated in Borrow's Court, formerly King's Court, Willow Lane, 

St. Giles's, Norwich, and here Borrow lived at intervals from 1816 to his 

marriage in 1839. His mother lived here for thirty-three years until 1849 ; his 

father died here, and is buried in the neighbouring churchyard of St. Giles's. 



BORROWS MOTHER 17 

Stuart INIill.^ All this by the way, but there is little 
more to record of Borrow's mother apart from the 
letters addressed to her by her son, which occur in 
their due place in these records. Yet one little 
memorandum among my papers which bears JNlrs. 
Borrow's signature may well find place here : 

In the year 1797 I was at Canterbury. One night at about 
one o'clock Sir Robert Laurie and Captain Treve came to our 
lodgings and tapped at our bedroom door, and told my husband 
to get up, and get the men under arms without beat of drum as 
soon as possible, for that there was a mutiny at the Nore. IMy 
husband did so, and in less than two hours they had marched out 
of town towards Sheerness without making any noise. They had 
to break open the store-house in order to get provender, because the 
Quartermaster, Serjeant Rowe, was out of the way. The Dragoon 
Guards at that time at Canterbury were in a state of mutiny. 

Ann Borrow. 

* This Thomas King was a cousin of my mother ; his father huilt the 
Borrow House in Norwich in 1812. The only allusion to him I have ever 
seen in print is contained in a letter on Lavengro contributed by Thomas 
Burcham to The Britannia newspaper of June 2G, 1851: — '\Vith your 
criticism on Lavengro I cordially agree, and if you were disappointed in the 
long promised work, what must I have been } A schoolfellow of Borrow, 
who, in the autobiography, expected to find much interesting matter, not 
only relating to himself, but also to schoolfellows and friends — the 
associates of his youth, who, in after-life, gained no slight notoriety — amongst 
them may be named Sir James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak ; poor Stoddard, 
who was murdered at Bokhara, and who, as a boy, displayed that noble 
bearing and high sensitiveness of honour which partly induced that fatal result ; 
and Thomas King, one of Borrow's early friends, who, the son of a carpenter 
at Norwich, the landlord of Lavengro's father, after working in his father's 
shop till nearly sixteen, went to Paris, entered himself as a student at one of 
the hospitals, and through his energy and intellect became internal surgeon 
of L'Hotel Dieu and private physician to Prince Talleyrand.' Thomas 
Borrow Burcham was Magistrate of Southwark Police Court from 1856 till 
his death in 18G9. He was the son of Maria Perfrement, Borrow's aunt. 



CHAPTER III 

JOHN THOMAS BORROW 

John Thoinias Borrow was born two years before his 
younger brother, that is, on the 15th April 1801. 
His father, then Serjeant Borrow, was wandering from 
town to town, and it is not known where his elder son 
first saw the light. John Borrow's nature was cast in 
a somewhat different mould from that of his brother. 
He was his father's pride. Serjeant Borrow could not 
understand George with his extraordinary taste for the 
society of queer people — the wild Irish and the ragged 
Romanies. John had far more of the normal in his 
being. Borrow gives us in Lavengro our earliest 
glimpse of his brother : 

He was a beautiful child ; one of those occasionally seen in 
England, and in England alone ; a rosy, angelic face, blue eyes, 
and light chestnut hair; it was not exactly an Anglo-Saxon 
countenance, in which, by the by, there is generally a cast of 
loutishness and stupidity ; it partook, to a certain extent, of the 
Celtic character, particularly in the fire and vivacity which 
illumined it; his face was the mirror of his mind; perhaps no 
disposition more amiable was ever found amongst the children of 
Adam, united, however, with no inconsiderable portion of high 
and dauntless spirit. So great was his beauty in infancy, that 
people, especially those of the poorer classes, would follow the 
nurse who carried him about in order to look at and bless his 
lovely face. At the age of three months an attempt was made to 
snatch him from his mother's arms in the streets of London, at 

13 



JOHN THOMAS BORROW 19 

the moment she was about to enter a coach ; indeed, his appear- 
ance seemed to operate so powerfully upon every person who 
beheld him, that my parents were under continual apprehension 
of losing him ; his beauty, however, was perhaps surpassed by the 
quickness of his parts. He mastered his letters in a few hours, 
and in a day or two could decipher the names of people on the 
doors of houses and over the shop-windows. 

John received his early education at the Norwich 
Grammar School, while the younger brother was kept 
under the paternal wing. Father and mother, with 
their younger boy George, were always on the move, 
passing from county to county and from country to 
country, as Serjeant Borrow, soon to be Captain, 
attended to his duties of drilling and recruiting, now 
in England, now in Scotland, now in Ireland. We 
are given a fascinating glimpse of John Borrow in 
Lavengro by way of a conversation between Mr. and 
Mrs. Borrow over the education of their children. It 
was agreed that while the family were in Edinburgh 
the boys should be sent to the High School, and so at 
the historic school that Sir Walter Scott had attended 
a generation before the two boys were placed, John 
being removed from the Norwich Grammar School 
for the purpose. Among his many prejudices of after 
years Borrow's dislike of Scott was perhaps the most 
regrettable, otherwise he would have gloried in the 
fact that their childhood had had one remarkable 
point in common. Each boy took part in the feuds 
between the Old Town and the New Town. Exactly 
as Scott records his prowess at 'the manning of the 
Cowgate Port,' and the combats maintained with 
great vigour, ' with stones, and sticks, and fisticuffs,' as 
set forth in the first volume of Lockhart, so we have 
not dissimilar feats set down in Lavengro. Side 



20 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

by side also with the story of ' Green-Breeks,' which 
stands out in Scott's narrative of his school combats, 
we have the more lurid account by Borrow of David 
Haggart. Literary biography is made more interesting 
by such episodes of likeness and of contrast. 

We next find John Borrow in Ireland with his 
father, mother, and brother. George is still a child, 
but he is precocious enough to be learning the language, 
and thus laying the foundation of his interest in little- 
known tongues. John is now an ensign in his father's 
regiment. ' Ah ! he was a sweet being, that boy 
soldier, a plant of early promise, bidding fair to become 
in after time all that is great, good, and admirable ' 
Ensign John tells his little brother how pleased he is 
to find himself, although not yet sixteen years old, ' a 
person in authority with many Englishmen under me. 
Oh ! these last six weeks have passed like hours in 
heaven.' That was in 1816, and we do not meet John 
again until five years later, when we hear of him 
rushing into the water to save a drowning man, while 
twenty others were bathing who might have rendered 
assistance. Borrow records once again his father's 

satisfaction : 

f 

' My boy, my own boy, you are the very image of myself, the 
day I took off my coat in the park to fight Big Ben,' said my 
father, on meeting his son, wet and dripping, immediately after 
his bold feat. And who cannot excuse the honest pride of the old 
man — the stout old man ? 

In the interval the war had ended, and Napoleon 
had departed for St. Helena. Peace had led to the 
pensioning of militia officers, or reducing to half-pay of 
the juniors. The elder Borrow had settled in Norwich. 
George was set to study at the Grammar School there, 



JOHN THOMAS BORROW 21 

while his brother worked in Old Crome's studio, for 
here was a moment when Norwich had its interesting 
Renaissance, and John Borrow was bent on being an 
artist. He had worked with Crome once before — 
during the brief interval that Napoleon was at Elba — 
but now he set to in real earnest, and we have evidence 
of a score of pictures by him that were catalogued in 
the exhibitions of the Norwich Society of Artists be- 
tween the years 1817 and 1824. They include one 
portrait of the artist's father, and two of his brother 
George.^ Old Crome died in 1821, and then John 
went to London to study under Haydon. Borrow 
declares that his brother had real taste for painting, 
and that ' if circumstances had not eventually diverted 
his mind from the pursuit, he would have attained 
excellence, and left behind him some enduring monu- 
ment of his powers.' ' He lacked, however,' he tells 
us, *one thing, the want of which is but too often 
fatal to the sons of genius, and without which genius 
is little more than a splendid toy in the hands of the 
possessor — perseverance, dogged perseverance.' It is 
when he is thus commenting on his brother's character- 
istics that Borrow gives his own fine if narrow eulogy 
of Old Crome. John Borrow seems to have continued 
his studies in London under Haydon for a year, and 
then to have gone to Paris to copy pictures at the 

^ I am uot able to trace more than three of John Borrow's pictures : 
firstly, a portrait of George Borrow, reproduced in this book, which was long 
in the possession of Mr. William Jarrold, the well-known publisher of Norwich, 
and is now in the National Portrait Gallery in London, having been purchased 
by the Director in 1S)12 ; secondly, the portrait of Borrow's father in the 
possession of a lady at Leamington ; and thirdly, The Judgment of Solomon, 
which for a long time hung as an overmantel in the Borrow House in Willow 
Lane, Norwich. Dr. Knapp also saw in Norwich ^ A Portrait of a Gentle- 
man,' by John Borrow. A second portrait of George Borrow by his brother 
was taken by the latter to Mexico, and has not since been heard of. 



22 GEORGE BORROAV AND HIS CIRCLE 

Louvre. He mentions a particular copy that he made 
of a celebrated picture by one of the Italian masters, 
for which a Hungarian nobleman paid him well. His 
three years' absence was brought to an abrupt termina- 
tion by news of his father's illness. He returned to 
Norwich in time to stand by that father's bedside 
when he died. The elder Borrow died, as we have 
seen, in February 1824. The little home in King's 
Court was kept on for the mother, and as John was 
making money by his pictures it was understood that 
he should stay with her. On the 1st April, however, 
George started for London, carrying the manuscript 
of Romantic Ballads from the Danish to Sir Richard 
Phillips, the publisher. On the 29th of the same month 
he was joined by his brother John. John had come to 
London at his own expense, but in the interests of the 
Norwich Town Council. The council wanted a portrait 
of one of its mayors for St. Andrew's Hall — that Val- 
halla of Norwich municipal worthies which still strikes 
the stranger as well-nigh unique in the city life of 
England. The municipality would fain have en- 
couraged a fellow-citizen, and John Borrow had been 
invited to paint the portrait. 'Why,' it was asked, 
' should the money go into a stranger's pocket and be 
spent in London ? ' John, however, felt diffident of his 
ability and declined, and this in spite of the fact that 
the £100 offered for the portrait must have been very 
tempting. ' What a pity it was,' he said, ' that Crome 
was dead.' ' Crome,' said the orator of the deputation 
that had called on John Borrow, 

' Crome ; yes, he was a clever man, a very clever man, in his 
way ; he was good at painting landscapes and farm-houses, but he 
would not do in the present instance, were he alive. He had no 
conception of the heroic, sir. We want some person capable of 



JOHN THOMAS BORROW 23 

representing our mayor standing under the Norman arch of the 
cathedral/ ^ 

At the mention of the heroic John bethought himself 
of Haydon, and suggested his name; hence his visit to 
London, and his proposed interview with Haydon. The 
two brothers went together to call upon the ' painter of 
the heroic ' at his studio in Connaught Terrace, Hyde 
Park. There was some difficulty about their admission, 
and it turned out afterwards that Haydon thought they 
might be duns, as he was very hard up at the time. 
His eyes glistened at the mention of the £100. 'I am 
not very fond of painting portraits,' he said, ' but a 
mayor is a mayor, and there is something grand in that 
idea of the Norman arch.' And thus JNIayor Hawkes 
came to be painted by Benjamin Haydon, and his 
portrait may be found, not without diligent search, 
among the many municipal worthies that figure on the 
walls of that most picturesque old Hall in Norwich. 
Here is Borrow's description of the painting: 

The original mayor was a mighty, portly man, with a bull's 
head, black hair, body like that of a dray horse, and legs and 
thighs corresponding ; a man six foot high at the least. To his 
bull's head, black hair, and body the painter had done justice; 
there was one point, however, in which the portrait did not corre- 
spond with the original — the legs were disproportionably short, 
the painter having substituted his own legs for those of the 
mayor. 

John Borrow described Robert Hawkes to his brother 
as a person of many qualifications : 

— big and portly, with a voice like Boanerges ; a religious man, 
the possessor of an immense pew ; loyal, so much so that I once 
heard him say that he would at any time go three miles to hear 
any one sing ' God save the King ' ; moreover, a giver of excellent 

^ Lavengro, ch. xxv. 



24 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

dinners. Such is our present mayor, wlio, owing to his loyalty, 
his religion, and a little, perhaps, to his dinners, is a mighty 
favourite. 

Haydon, who makes no mention of the Borrows in his 
Corj^espondence or Autobiography, although there is one 
letter of George Borrow's to him in tlie latter work, 
had been in jail for debt three years prior to the visit 
of the Borrows. He was then at work on his greatest 
success in 'the heroic'- — IVie Raising of Lazarus, a 
canvas nineteen feet long by fifteen high. The 
debt was one to house decorators, for the artist had 
ever large ideas. The bailiff, he tells us,^ was so 
agitated at the sight of the painting of Lazarus in the 
studio that he cried out, ' Oh, my God ! Sir, I won't 
arrest you. Give me your word to meet me at twelve 
at the attorney's, and I'll take it.' In 1821 Haydon 
married, and a little later we find him again ' without a 
single shilling in the world — with a large picture before 
me not half done.' In April 1822 he is arrested at 
the instance of his colourman, ' with whom I had dealt 
for fifteen years,' and in November of the same year he 
is arrested again at the instance of ' a miserable apothe- 
cary.' In April 1823 we find him in the King's Bench 
Prison, from which he was released in July. llie 
Raising of Lazarus meanwhile had gone to pay his 
upholsterer £300, and his Chiisfs Entry into Jerusa- 
lem had been sold for £240, although it had brought 
him £3000 in receipts at exhibitions. Clearly heroic 
pictures did not pay, and Haydon here took up 'the 
torment of portrait-painting ' as he called it. 

' Can you wonder,' he wrote in July 1825, 'that I nauseate 
portraits, except portraits of clever people. I feel quite convinced 

1 Life of B. R. Ilmjdon, by Tom Taylor, ]y5.3, vol. ii. p. 21. 



:^5a.. ' j'>j^'^ 




KOliKRT HAWKKS, MAYOR OF NORWICH in 1824 

From the painting by Henjamin Haydon in St. Andrew's Hall, Norwicli. 

This portrait has its association with Borrow in that his brother John was sent 

to London to request Haydon to paint it, and Borrow describes the picture 

in Lavens'ro. 



JOHN THOMAS BORROW 25 

tliat every portrait-painter, if there be purgatory, will leap at 
once to heaven, without this previous purification.' 

Perhaps it was Mayor Hawkes who helped to inspire 
this feeling/ Yet the hundred pounds that John 
Borrow was able to procure must have been a godsend, 
for shortly before this we find him writing in his diary 
of the desperation that caused him to sell his books. 
* Books that had cost me £20 I got only £3 for. But 
it was better than starvation.' Indeed it was in April 
of this year that the very baker was ' insolent,' and so 
in May 1824, as we learn from Tom Taylor's Life, he 
produced ' a full-length portrait of Mr. Hawkes, a late 
^layor of Norwich, painted for St. Andrew's Hall in 
that city.' But I must leave Haydon's troubled career, 
which closes so far as the two brothers are concerned 
with a letter from George to Haydon written the 
following year from 26 Bryanston Street, Portman 
Square : 

Dear Sir, — I should feel extremely obliged if you would 
allow me to sit to you as soon as possible. I am going to the 
south of France in little better than a fortnight, and I would 
sooner lose a thousand pounds than not have the honour of 
appearing in the picture. — Yours sincerely, 

Georgp: Borrow,^ 

' Or perhaps the experience contained in a letter to Miss Mitford in 1824 
{Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table Talk, 2 vols., 1876) : 

' I have had a horrid week with a mother and eight daughters ! Mamma 
remembering herself a beauty ; Sally and Betsey, etc., see her a matron. They 
say, " Oh ! this is more suitable to mamma's age," and "that fits mamma's 
time of life ! " But mamma does not agree. Betsey, and Sally, and Eliza, 
and Patty want "mamma" ! Mamma wants herself as she looked when she 
was Betsey's age, and papa fell in love with her. So I am distracted to 
death. I have a great mind to paint her with a long beard like Salvator, 
and say, "That's my idea of a fit accompaniment." ' 

^ Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table Talk, with a Memoir 
by his son Frederic Wordsworth Haydon, vol. i. pp. 360-Gl. 



26 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

As Borrow was at the time in a most impoverished 
condition, it is not easy to believe that he would have 
wished to be taken at his word. He certainly had not 
a thousand pounds to lose. But he did undoubtedly, 
as we shall see, take that journey on foot through the 
south of France, after the manner of an earlier vaga- 
bond of literature — Oliver Goldsmith. Haydon was 
to be far too much taken up with his own troubles dur- 
ing the coming months to think any more about the 
Borrows when he had once completed the portrait of 
the mayor, which he had done by July of this year. 
Borrow's letter to him is, however, an obvious outcome 
of a remark dropped by the painter on the occasion of 
his one visit to his studio when the following conversa- 
tion took place : 

'I'll stick to the heroic,"' said the painter; 'I now and then 
dabble in tlie comic, but what I do gives me no pleasure, the 
comic is so low ; there is nothing like the heroic. I am engaged 
here on a heroic picture," said he, pointing to the canvas ; ' the 
subject is " Pharaoh dismissing Moses from Egypt," after the last 
plague — the death of the first-born, — it is not far advanced — 
that finished figure is Moses ' : they both looked at the canvas, and 
I, standing behind, took a modest peep. The picture, as the 
painter said, was not far advanced, the Pharaoh was merely in 
outline ; my eye was, of course, attracted by the finished figure, or 
rather what the painter had called the finished figure ; but, as I 
gazed upon it, it appeared to me that there was something de- 
fective — something unsatisfactory in tiie figure. I concluded, 
however, that the painter, notwithstanding what he had said, had 
omitted to give it the finishing touch. ' I intend this to be my 
best picture,' said the painter ; ' what I want now is a face for 
Pharaoh ; I have long been meditating on a face for Pharaoh."* 
Here, chancing to cast his eye upon my countenance, of whom he 
had scarcely taken any manner of notice, he remained with his 
mouth open for some time. ' Who is this ? ' said he at last. ' Oh, 
this is my brother, I forgot to introduce him .' 



JOHN THOMAS BORROW 27 

We wish that the acquaintance had extended further, 
but this was not to be. Borrow was soon to commence 
the wanderings which were to give him much unsatis- 
factory fame, and the pair never met again. Let us, 
however, return to John Borrow, who accompanied 
Hay don to Norwich, leaving his brother for some time 
longer to the tender mercies of Sir Richard Phillips. 
John, we judge, seems to have had plenty of shrewd- 
ness, and was not without a sense of his own limita- 
tions. A chance came to him of commercial success 
in a distant land, and he seized that chance. A 
Norwich friend, Allday Kerrison, had gone out to 
Mexico, and writing from Zacatecas in 1825 asked 
John to join him. John accepted. His salary in the 
service of the Real del JNIonte Company was to be 
£300 per annum. He sailed for Mexico in 1826, 
having obtained from his Colonel, Lord Orford, 
leave of absence for a year, it being understood that 
renewals of that leave of absence might be granted. 
He was entitled to half-pay as a Lieutenant of the 
West Norfolk Militia, and this he settled upon his 
mother during his absence. His career in Mexico was 
a failure. There are many of his letters to his mother 
and brother extant which tell of the difficulties of his 
situation. He was in three Mexican companies in 
succession, and was about to be sent to Columbia to 
take charge of a mine when he was stricken with a 
fever, and died at Guanajuato on 22nd November 
1833. He had far exceeded any leave that his Colonel 
could in fairness grant, and before his death his name 
had been taken off the army rolls. The question of 
his pay produced a long correspondence, which can be 
found in the archives of the Rolls Office. I have the 
original drafts of these letters in Borrow's handwriting. 



28 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

The first letter by Borrow is dated 8th September 
1831 ; it is better to give the correspondence in 
its order/ The letters speak for themselves, and 
require no comment. 

I 

To the Rt. Hon. The Secretary at War 

Willow Lane, Norwich, September 8, 1831. 
Sir, — I take the liberty of troubling you with these lines for 
the purpose of enquiring whether there is any objection to the 
issuing of the disembodied allowance of my brother Lieut. John 
Borrow of the Welsh Norfolk Militia, who is at present abroad, 
I do this by the advice of the Army Pay Office, a power of 
Attorney having been granted to me by Lieut. Borrow to receive 
the said allowance for him. I beg leave to add that my brother 
was present at the last training of his regiment, that he went 
abroad with the leave of his Commanding Officer, which leave of 
absence has never been recalled, that he has sent home the neces- 
sary affidavits, and that there is no clause in the Pay and Clothing 
Act to authorize the stoppage of his allowance. I have the 
honor to remain, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant, 

George Borrow. 

II 

To the Right Hon. The Secretary at War 

Willow Lane, Norwich, 17M Septr. 1831. 
Sir, — I have to acknowledge the receipt of No. 33,063, dated 
16th inst., from the War Office, in which I am informed that the 
Office does not feel authorized to give instructions for the issue of 
the arrears of disembodied allowance claimed by my brother 
Lieut. Borrow of the West Norfolk, until he attend the next 
training of his regiment, and I now beg leave to ask the following 

* From what are called the ' War Office Weeded Papers, Old Series, No. 
33,063/17,' and succeeding numbers. 



JOHN THOMAS BORROW 29 

question, and to request that I may receive an answer with all 
convenient speed. What farther right to his present arrears of 
disembodied allowance will Lieut. Sorrow's appearance at the 
next training of his regiment confer upon him, and provided there 
is no authority at present for ordering the payment of those 
arrears, by what authority will the War Office issue instructions 
for the payment of the same, after his arrival in this country and 
attendance at the training ? Sir, provided Lieut. Borrow is not 
entitled to his arrears of disembodied allowance at the present 
moment, he will be entitled to them at no future period, and I 
was to the last degree surprised at the receipt of an answer which 
tends to involve the office in an inextricable dilemma, for it is in 
fact a full acknowledgment of the justice of Lieutenant Borrow's 
claims, and a refusal to satisfy them until a certain time, which 
instantly brings on the question, 'By what authority does the 
War Office seek to detain the disembodied allowance of an officer, 
to which he is entitled by Act of Parliament, a moment after it 
has become due and is legally demanded ? ' If it be objected that 
it is not legally demanded, I reply that the affidavits filled up in 
the required form are in the possession of the Pay Office, and also 
a power of Attorney in the Spanish language, together with a 
Notarial translation, which power of Attorney has been declared 
by the Solicitor of the Treasury to be legal and sufficient. To 
that part of the Official letter relating to my brother's appearance 
at the next training I have to reply, that I believe he is at present 
lying sick in the Mountains above Vera Cruz, the pest-house of 
the New World, and that the last time I heard from him I was 
informed that it would be certain death for him to descend into 
the level country, even were he capable of the exertion, for the 
fever was then raging there. Full six months have elapsed since 
he prepared to return to his native country, having received infor- 
mation that there was a probability that his regiment would be 
embodied, (but) the hand of God overtook him on his route. He 
is the son. Sir, of an Officer who served his King abroad and at 
home for upwards of half a century ; he had intended his 
disembodied allowance for the use of his widowed and infirm 
mother, but it must now be transmitted to him for his own 
support until he can arrive in England. But, Sir, I do not wish 
to excite compassion in his behalf, all I request is that he may 



30 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

have justice done him, and if it be, I shall be informed in the next 
letter, that the necessary order has been given to the Pay Office 
for the issue of his arrears. I iiave the honor to remain, Sir, your 
most obedient, humble servant, 

Gkouge Boiuiow. 



Ill 
To the Right Hon. The Secretary at War 

Norwich, Novr. 24, 1831. 

Sill, — Not having been favoured with an answer to the letter 
which I last addressed to you concerning the arrears of disem- 
bodied allowance due to Lieut. John Borrow of the West Norfolk 
Militia, I again take the liberty of submitting this matter to your 
consideration. More than six months have elapsed since by virtue 
of a power of attorney granted to me by Lieut. Borrow, I made 
demand at the army Pay Office for a portion of those arrears, 
being the amount of two affidavits which were produced, but 
owing to the much unnecessary demur which ensued, chiefly with 
respect to the power of Attorney, since declared to be valid, that 
demand has not hitherto been satisfied. I therefore am compelled 
to beg that an order may be issued to the Pay Office for the 
payment to me of the sums specified in tlie said affidavits, that 
the amount may be remitted to Lieut. Borrow, he being at present 
in great need thereof. If it be answered that Lieut. Borrow was 
absent at the last training of his regiment, and that he is not 
entitled to any arrears of pay, I must beg leave to observe that 
the demand was legally made many months previous to the said 
training, and cannot now be set aside by his non-appearance, 
which arose from unavoidable necessity ; he having for the last 
year been lying sick in one of the provinces of New Spain. And 
now. Sir, I will make bold to inquire whether Lieut. Borrow, the 
son of an Officer, who served his country abroad and at home, for 
upwards of fifty years, is to lose his commission for being incap- 
able, from a natural visitation, of attending at the training ; if it 
be replied in the affirmative, I have only to add that his case will 
be a cruelly hard one. But I hope and trust, Sir, that taking all 



JOHN THOMAS BORROW 81 

these circumstances into consideration you will not yd cause his 
name to be stricken off' the list, and that you will permit him to 
retain his commission in the event of his arriving in England 
with all the speed which his health of body will permit, and that 
to enable him so to do his arrears^ you will forthwith give an 
order for the payment of his arrears. I have the honor to be, Sir, 
your very humble servant, 

Geouge Boruow. 

IV 
To the Rt. Hon. The Secretary at War 

Norwich, Deer. 13, 1831. 

Sir, — I have just received a letter from my brother Lieu- 
tenant J. Borrow, from which it appears he has had leave of 
absence from his Colonel, the Earl of Orford, up to the present 
year. He says 'in a letter dated Wolterton, 21st June 1828, 
Lord Orford writes : " should you want a further leave I will not 
object to it." 20th May 1829 says : "I am much obliged to you 
for a letter of the 18th March, and shall be glad to allow you 
leave of absence for a twelvemonth." I enclose his last letter 
from Brussels, August 6, 1829. At the end it gives very evident 
proof that my remaining in Mexico zvas not only by his Lordship's 
permission^ hut even hy his advice.'' Sir, if you should require it 
I will transmit this last letter of the Earl of Orford's, which my 
brother has sent to me, but beg leave to observe that no blame 
can be attached to his Lordship in this case, he having from a 
multiplicity of important business doubtless forgotten these minor 
matters. I hope now. Sir, that you will have no further objection 
to issue an order for the payment of that portion of my brother's 
arrears specified in the two affidavits in the possession of the Pay- 
master General. By the unnecessary obstacles which have been 
flung in my brother's way in obtaining his arrears he has been 
subjected to great inconvenience and distress. An early answer 
on this point will much oblige, Sir, your most obedient, humble 
servant, Geokge Borrow. 



^ (' his arrears ' are ruled out.) Note by War Office. 



32 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

V 
To the Rt. Hon. The Secretary at War 

Willow Lane, Norwich, May 24, 1833. 

Sir, — I take the liberty of addressing you for the purpose of 
requesting that an order be given to the Paymaster General for 
the issue of the arrears of pay of my brother Lieutenant John 
Borrow of the West Norfolk Militia, whose agent I am by virtue 
of certain powers of Attorney, and also for the continuance of the 
payment of his disembodied allowance. Lieutenant Borrow was 
not present at the last training of his Regiment, being in Mexico 
at the time, and knowing nothing of the matter. I beg leave to 
observe that no official nor other letter was dispatched to him by 
the adjutant to give him notice of the event, nor was I, his agent, 
informed of it, he therefore cannot have forfeited his arrears and 
disembodied allowance. He was moreover for twelve months 
previous to the training, and still is, so much indisposed from the 
effects of an attack of the yellow fever, that his return would be 
attended with great danger, which can be proved by the certificate 
of a Medical Gentleman practising in Norwich, who was consulted 
from Mexico. Lieutenants Harper and Williams, of the same 
Regiment, have recovered their pay and arrears, although absent 
at the last training, therefore it is clear and manifest that no 
objection can be made to Lieut. Borrow's claim, who went abroad 
with his Commanding Officer's permission, which those Gentlemen 
did not. In conclusion I have to add that I have stated nothing 
which I cannot substantiate, and that I court the most minute 
scrutiny into the matter. I have the honor to be. Sir, your 
most obedient and most humble servant, 

George Borrow. 

The last of these letters is in another handwriting 
than that of Borrow, who by this time had started for 
St. Petersburg for the Bible Society. The officials 
were adamant. To one letter the War Office replied 
that they could not consider any claims until Lieutenant 




GEORGE BORROW 

From a portrait by his brother, John Thomas Borrow, taken in early youth 

when his hair was black. This portrait is now in the National Portrait 

Gallery, London. 



JOHN THOMAS BORROW 83 

Borrow of the West Norfolk Militia should have arrived 
in England to attend the training of his regiment. 
These five letters are, as we have said, in the Rolls 
Office, although the indefatigable Professor Knapp 
seems to have dropped across only two of them there. 
Their chief interest is in that they are the earliest in 
order of date of the hitherto known letters of Borrow. 
There is one further letter on the subject written 
somewhat later by old Mrs. Borrow. She also appeals 
to the War Office for her son's allowance.^ It would 
seem clear that the arrears were never paid. 

To the Rt Hon. The Earl of Orford 

Willow Lane, Norwich, 26 May 1834. 

My Lord, — I a few days since received the distressing intelli- 
gence of the death of my dear son John, a lieutenant in your 
Lordship's West Norfolk Regiment of Militia, after the sufferings 
of a protracted and painful illness ; the melancholy event took 
place on the 22nd November last at Guanajuato in Mexico. 
Having on the former irreparable loss of my dear husband experi- 
enced your Lordship's kindness, I am induced to trespass on your 
goodness in a like case of heavy affliction, by requesting that you 
will be pleased to make the necessary application to the Secretary 
at War to authorise me to receive the arrears of pay due to my 
late son, viz. : ten months to the period of the training, and from 
that time to the day of his decease, for which I am informed it is 
requisite to have your Lordship's certificate of leave of absence 
from the said training. The amount is a matter of great import- 
ance to me in my very limited circumstances, having been at con- 
siderable expense in fitting him out, which, though at the time it 
occasioned me much pecuniary inconvenience, I thought it my 
duty to exert all my means to accomplish, my present distress of 

^ This letter is from the original among the Borrow Papers in my 
possession. 

c 



34 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

mind is the greater having to struggle with my feelings without 
the consolation and advice of my son George, who is at this time 
at St. Petersburg. Your Lordship will, I trust, pardon the 
liberty I am taking, and the trouble I am giving, and allow for 
the feelings of an afflicted mother. I have the honor to be your 
Lordship's most obedient servant, Ann Borrow. 

I have said that there are letters of John Sorrow's 
extant. Fragments of these will be found in Dr. 
Knapp's book. These show a keen intelligence, great 
practicality, and common sense. George — in 1829 — had 
asked his brother as to joining him in Mexico. ' If 
the country is soon settled I shall say " yes," ' John 
answers. With equal wisdom he says to his brother, 

* Do not enter the army ; it is a bad spec' In this 
same year, 1829, John writes to ask whether his mother 
and brother are ' still living in that windy house of old 
King's ; it gives me the rheumatism to think of it.' 
In 1830 he writes to his mother that he wishes his 
brother were making money. ' Neither he nor I have 
any luck, he works hard and remains poor.' In 
February of 1831 John writes to George suggesting 
that he should endeavour to procure a commission in 
the regiment, and in July of the same year to try the 
law again : 

I am convinced that your want of success in life is more owing 
to your being unlike other people than to any other cause. 

John, as we have seen, died in Mexico of fever. 
George was at St. Petersburg working for the Bible 
Society when his mother writes from Norwich to tell 
him the news. John had died on 22nd November 
1833. ' You are now my only hope,' she writes, 

* . . do not grieve, my dear George. I trust we 
shall all meet in heaven. Put a crape on your hat for 



JOHN THOMAS BORROW 



35 



some time.' Had George Borrow's brother lived it 
might have meant very much in his Hfe. There might 
have been nephews and nieces to soften the asperity 
of his later years. Who can say ? Meanwhile, 
Lavengro contains no happier pages than those con- 
cerned with this dearly loved brother. 






■mm 



mmrn^ii 




GEORGE BORROW'S BIRTHPLACE AT DUMPLING GREEN 
From a drawing hy Fortunino Matania 



CHAPTER IV 

A WANDERING CHILDHOOD 

We do not need to inquire too deeply as to Borrow's 
possible gypsy origin in order to account for his vaga- 
bond propensities. The lives of his parents before his 
birth, and the story of his own boyhood, sufficiently 
account for the dominant tendency in Borrow. His 
father and mother were married in 1793. Almost 
every year they changed their domicile. In 1801 a 
son was born to them — they still continued to change 
their domicile. Captain Borrow followed his regiment 
from place to place, and his family accompanied him on 
these journeys. Dover, Colchester, Sandgate, Canter- 
bury, Chelmsford — these are some of the towns where 
the Borrows sojourned. It was the merest accident — 
the Peace of Amiens, to be explicit — that led them 
back to East Dereham in 1803, so that the second son 
was born in his grandfather's house. George was only 
a month old when he was carried off to Colchester; 
in 1804 he was in the barracks of Kent, in 1805 of 
Sussex, in 1806 at Hastings, in 1807 at Canterbury, 
and so on. The indefatigable Dr. Knapp has recorded 
every detail for all who love the minute, the meticu- 
lous, in biography. The whole of the first thirteen 
years of Borrow's life is filled up in this way, until in 
1816 he and his parents found a home of some per- 
manence in Norwich. In 1809-10 they were at East 

36 



A WANDERING CHILDHOOD 37 

Dereham, in 1810-11 at Norman Cross, in 1812 
wandering from Harwich to Sheffield, and in 1813 
wandering from Sheffield to Edinburgh; in 1814 they 
were in Norwich, and in 1815-16 in Ireland. In this 
last year they returned to Norwich, the father to 
retire on full pay, and to live in Willow Lane until 
his death. How could a boy, whose first twelve years 
of life had been made up of such continual wandering, 
have been other than a restless, nomad-loving man, 
envious of the free life of the gypsies, for whom alone 
in later life he seemed to have kindliness ? Those 
twelve years are to most boys merely the making of a 
moral foundation for good or ill ; to Borrow they were 
everything, and at least four personalities captured his 
imagination during that short span, as we see if we 
follow his juvenile wanderings more in detail to Dere- 
ham, Norman Cross, Edinburgh, and Clonmel, and the 
personalities are Lady Fenn, Ambrose Smith, David 
Haggart, and Murtagh. Let us deal with each in 
turn : 

A. East Dereham and Lady Fenn. — In our 
opening chapter we referred to the lines in Lavengro, 
where Borrow recalls his early impressions of his native 
town, or at least the town in the neighbourhood of the 
hamlet in which he was born. Borrow, we may be sure, 
would have repudiated 'Dumpling Green' if he could. 
The name had a humorous suggestion. To this day 
they call boys from Norfolk ' Norfolk Dumplings ' in 
the neighbouring shires. But East Dereham was 
something to be proud of. In it had died the writer 
who, through the greater part of Borrow's life, remained 
the favourite poet of that half of England which pro- 
fessed the Evangelical creed in which Borrow was 
brought up. Cowper was buried here by the side of 



38 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Mary Unwin, and every Sunday little George would 
see his tomb just as Henry Kingsley was wont to see 
the tombs in Chelsea Old Church. The fervour of 
devotion to Cowper's memory that obtained in those 
early days must have been a stimulus to the boy, who 
from the first had ambitions far beyond anything that 
he was to achieve. Here was his first lesson. The 
second came from Lady Fenn — a more vivid impres- 
sion for the child. Twenty years before Borrow was 
born Cowper had sung her merits in his verse. She and 
her golden-headed cane are commemorated in Lavengro. 
Dame Eleanor Fenn had made a reputation in her 
time. As * Mrs. Teachwell ' and ' Mrs. Lovechild ' she 
had published books for the young of a most improv- 
ing character. The Child's Grammar, The Mothers 
Grammar, A Shoi^t Histoi^y of Insects, and Cobwebs to 
Catch Flies being of the number. The forty-fourth 
edition of The Child's Grammar by Mrs. Lovechild 
appeared in 1851, and the twenty-second edition of 
The Mothers Grammar in 1849. But it is her 
husband that her name most recalls to us. Sir John 
Fenn gave us the delightful Paston Letters — of which 
Horace Walpole said that ' they make all other letters 
not worth reading.' Walpole described ' Mr. Fenn of 
East Dereham in Norfolk ' as ' a smatterer in antiquity, 
but a very good sort of man.' Fenn, who held the 
original documents of the Letters, sent his first two 
volumes, when published, to Buckingham Palace, and 
the King acknowledged the gifts by knighting the 
editor, who, however, died in 1794, before George 
Borrow was born. His widow survived until 1813, 
and Borrow was in his seventh or eighth year when he 
caught these notable glimpses of his ' Lady Bounti- 
ful,' who lived in ' the half-aristocratic mansion ' of the 



A WANDERING CHILDHOOD 39 

town. But we know next to nothing of Borrow in 
East Dereham, from which indeed he departed in his 
eighth year. There are, however, interesting references 
to his memories of the place in JLavengro. The first 
is where he recalls to his author friend, who had offered 
him comet wine of 1811, his recollection of gazing at 

the comet from the market-place of 'pretty D ' 

in 1811.^ The second reference is when he goes to 
church with the gypsies and dreams of an incident in 
his childhood : 

It appeared as if I had fallen asleep in the pew of the old 
church of pretty Dereham. I had occasionally done so when a 
child, and had suddenly woke up. Yes, surely, I had been asleep 
and had woke up ; but no ! if I had been asleep I had been 
waking in my sleep, struggling, striving, learning and unlearning 
in my sleep. Years had rolled away whilst I had been asleep — 
ripe fruit had fallen, green fruit had come on whilst I had been 
asleep — how circumstances had altered, and above all myself 
whilst 1 had been asleep. No, I had not been asleep in the old 
church ! I was in a pew, it is true, but not the pew of black 
leather in which I sometimes fell asleep in days of yore, but in a 
strange pew ; and then my companions, they were no longer those 
of days of yore. I was no longer with my respectable father 
and mother, and my dear brother, but with the gypsy cral and 
his wife, and the gigantic Tawno, the Antinous of the dusky 
people. And what was I myself? No longer an innocent child 
but a moody man, bearing in my face, as I knew well, the marks 
of my strivings and strugglings ; of what I had learnt and 
unlearnt. 

But Borrow, as I have said, left Dereham in his 
eighth year, and the author of a History of East Dereham 

* This episode, rescued from the manuscript that came into Dr. Knapp's 
possession, is only to be found in his Life of Borrow. He does not include it 
in his edition of Luvengro. That Borrow revisited East Dereham in later 
manhood we learn from Mr. S. H. Baldrey- See p. 420. 



40 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

thus accounts for several inaccuracies in his memory, 
both as to persons and things. 

B. Norman Cross and Ambrose Smith. — In Laven- 

gro Borrow recalls childish memories of Canterbury and 

of Hythe, at which latter place he saw the church vault 

filled with ancient skulls as we may see it there to-day. 

And after that the book which impressed itself most 

vividly upon his memory was Robinson Crusoe. How 

much he came to revere Defoe the pages of Lavengro 

most eloquently reveal to us. ' Hail to thee, spirit of 

Defoe ! What does not my own poor self owe to thee ? ' 

In 1810-11 his father was in the barracks at Norman 

Cross in Huntingdonshire. Here the Government had 

bought a large tract of land, and built upon it a huge 

wooden prison, and overlooking this a substantial barrack 

also of wood, the only brick building on the land being 

the house of the Commandant. The great building 

was destined for the soldiers taken prisoners in the 

French wars. The place was constructed to hold 5000 

prisoners, and 500 men were employed by the War 

Office in 1808 upon its construction. The first batch 

of prisoners were the victims of the battle of Vimeiro 

in that year. Borrow's description of the hardships of 

the prisoners has been called in question by a later 

writer, Arthur Brown, ^ who denies the story of bad 

food and ' straw-plait hunts,' and charges Borrow with 

recklessness of statement. ' What could have been the 

matter with the man to write such stuff as this ? ' asks 

1 The French Prisoners of Norman Cross : A Tale, by the Rev. Arthur 
Brown, Rector of Catfield, Norfolk. London : Hodder Brothers^ 18 New 
Bridge Street, E.G., 1895. Mr. Brown remarks that there were sixteen 
casernes, whereas Borrow says in Lavengro that there were five or six. * They 
looked,' he says, ' from outside exactly like a vast congeries of large, high 
carpenter's shops, with roofs of glaring red tiles, and surrounded by wooden 
palisades, very lofty and of prodigious strength.' 



A WANDERING CHILDHOOD 41 

Brown in reference to Borrow's story of bad meat and 
bad bread : which was not treating a great author with 
quite sufficient reverence. Borrow was but recalling 
memories of childhood, a period when one swallow does 
make a summer. He had doubtless seen examples of 
what he described, although it may not have been the 
normal condition of things. Brown's own description 
of the Norman Cross prison was interwoven with a 
love romance, in which a French officer fell in love with 
a girl of the neighbouring village of Yaxley, and after 
Waterloo returned to England and married her. When 
he wrote his story a very old man was still living at 
Yaxley, who remembered, as a boy, having often seen 
the prisoners on the road, some very well dressed, some 
in tatters, a few in uniform. The milestone is still 
pointed out which marked the limit beyond which the 
officer-prisoners might not walk. The buildings were 
destroyed in 1814, when all the prisoners were sent 
home, and the house of the Commandant, now a private 
residence, alone remains to recall this episode in our 
history. But Borrow's most vivid memory of Norman 
Cross was connected with the viper given to him by an 
old man, who had rendered it harmless by removing 
the fangs. It was the possession of this tame viper 
that enabled the child of eight — this was Borrow's age 
at the time — to impress the gypsies that he met soon 
afterwards, and particularly the boy Ambrose Smith, 
whom Borrow introduced to the world in Lavengro as 
Jasper Petulengro. Borrow's frequent meetings with 
Petulengro ^ are no doubt many of them mythical. He 
was an imaginative writer, and Dr. Knapp's worst 
banality is to suggest that he ' invented nothing.' But 

• The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society teaches me that the name should 
be spelt Petulengro. 



42 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Petulengro was a very real person, who lived the usual 
roving gypsy life. There is no reason to assume other- 
wise than that Borrow did actually meet him at Norman 
Cross when he was eight years old, and Ambrose a year 
younger, and not thirteen as Borrow states. In the ori- 
ginal manuscript of Laveiigro in my possession, as in the 
copy of it in Mrs. Borrow's handwriting that came into 
the possession of Dr. Knapp, ' Ambrose ' is given instead 
of * Jasper,' and the name was altered as an afterthought. 
It is of course possible that Borrow did not actually 
meet Jasper until his arrival in Norv»^ich, for in the first 
half of the nineteenth century various gypsy families 
were in the habit of assembling their carts and staking 
their tents on the heights above Norwich, known as 
Household Heath, that glorious tract of country that 
has been rendered memorable in history by the tragic 
life of Kett the tanner, and has been immortahsed in 
painting by Turner and Crome. Here were assembled 
the Smiths and Hemes and Boswells, names familiar 
to every student of gypsy lore. Jasper Petulengro, as 
Borrow calls him, or Ambrose Smith, to give him his 
real name, was the son of Faden Smith, and his name 
of Ambrose was derived from his uncle, Ambrose 
Smith, who was transported for stealing harness. 
Ambrose was twice married, and it was his second wife, 
Sanspirella Heme, who comes into the Borrow story. 
He had families by both his wives. Ambrose had an 
extraordinary varied career. It will be remembered by 
readers of the Zincali that when he visited Borrow at 
Oulton in 1842 he complained that ' There is no living for 
the poor people, brother, the chokengres (police) pursue 
us from place to place, and the gorgios are become 
either so poor or miserly that they grudge our cattle 
a bite of grass by the wayside, and ourselves a yard of 



A WANDERING CHILDHOOD 43 

ground to light a fire upon.' After a time Ambrose 
left the eastern counties and crossed to Ireland. In 
1868 he went to Scotland, and there seems to have 
revived his fortunes. In 1878 he and his family were 
encamped at Knockenhair Park, about a mile from 
Dunbar. Here Queen Victoria, who was staying at 
Broxmouth Park near by with the Dowager Duchess 
of Roxburghe, became interested in the gypsies, and 
paid them a visit.^ This was in the summer of 1878. 
Ambrose was then a very old man. He died in the 
following October. His wife, Sanspi or Sanspirella, 
received a message of sympathy from the Queen. Very 
shortly after Ambrose's death, however, most of the 
family went off to America, where doubtless they are now 
scattered, many of them, it may be, leading successful 
lives, utterly oblivious of the association of one of their 
ancestors with Borrow and his great book. Ambrose 
Smith was buried in Dunbar cemetery, the Christian 
service being read over his grave, and his friends erected 

' See In Gipsy Tents, by Francis Hindes Groomej p. 17. The late Queen 
herself writes (More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the Highlands, Smith, 
Elder and Co., 1884, p. 370), under the date Monday, August 2()th : "^At 
half-past three started with Beatrice, Leopold, and the Duchess in the landau 
and four, the Duke, Lady Ely, General Ponsonby, and Mr. Yorke going in 
the second can-iage, and Lord Haddington riding the whole way. We drove 
through the west part of Dunbar, which was very full, and where we were 
literally pelted with small nosegays, till the carriage was full of them ; then 
for some distance past the village of Belhaven, Knockindale Hill (Knocken- 
hair Park), where were stationed in their best attire the queen of the 
gypsies, an oldish woman with a yellow handkerchief on her head, and 
a youngish, very dark, and truly gypsy-like woman in velvet and a red 
shawl, and another woman. The queen is a thorough gypsy, with a scarlet 
cloak and a yellow handkerchief around her head. Men in red hunting- 
coats, all very dark, and all standing on a platform here, bowed and waved 
their handkerchiefs. George Smith told Mr. Myers that " the queen " 
was Sanspirella, that the "gypsy-like woman in velvet and a red shawl" 
was Bidi, and the other woman Delaia. The men were Ambrose, Tommy, 
and Alfred.* 



' 44 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

a stone to him which bears the following inscription, 
the hymn not being very accurately rendered : 

In Memory of 

Ambrose Smith, who died 22nd 

October 1878, aged 74 years. 

Also 

Thomas, his son, 

who died 28th May 1879, aged 48 years. 

'Nearer my Father's House, 
Where the many mansions be ; 
Nearer the Great White Throne, 
Nearer the Jasper Sea. 

' Nearer the bound of life 
Where we lay our burdens down ; 
Nearer leaving the Cross, 
Nearer gaining the Crown. 

' Feel thee near me when my feet 
Are slipping over the brink ; 
For it may be I 'm nearer home, 
Nearer now than I think.' * 

In December 1912 a London newspaper con- 
tained an account of a gypsy meeting at which Jasper 
Petulengro was present. Not only was this obviously 
impossible, but no relative of Ambrose Smith is 
apparently alive in England who could by any chance 
have justified the imposition. 

I have said that it is probable that Borrow did not 
meet Jasper or Ambrose until later days in Norwich. 
I assume this as possible because Borrow misstates the 
age of his boy friend in Lavengro. Ambrose was 
actually a year younger than Borrow, whereas when 
George was eight years of age he represents Ambrose 
as 'a lad of some twelve or thirteen years,' and he 

' I am indebted to an admirable article by Thomas William Thompson in 
the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, New Series, vol. iii., No. 3, January 
1910, for information concerning the later life of Jasper Petulengro. 



A WANDERING CHILDHOOD 45 

keeps up this illusion on more than one later occasion. 
However, we may take it as almost certain that 
Borrow received his first impression of the gypsies in 
these early days at Norman Cross. 

C. Edinburgh and David Haggart. — Three 
years separated the sojourn of the Borrow family at 
Norman Cross from their sojourn in Edinburgh — three 
years of continuous wandering. The West Norfolk 
Mihtia were watching the French prisoners at Norman 
Cross for fifteen months. After that we have glimpses 
of them at Colchester, at East Dereham again, at 
Harwich, at Leicester, at Huddersfield, concerning 
which place Borrow incidentally in Wild Wales writes 
of having been at school, in Sheffield, in Berwick-on- 
Tweed, and finally the family are in Edinburgh, where 
they arrive on 6th April 1813. We have already 
referred to Borrow's presence at the High School of 
Edinburgh, the school sanctified by association with 
Walter Scott and so many of his illustrious fellow- 
countrymen. He and his brother were at the High 
School for a single session, that is, for the winter 
session of 1813-14, although with the licence of a 
maker of fiction he claimed, in Lavengro, to have been 
there for two years. But it is not in this brief period 
of schooling of a boy of ten that we find the strongest 
influence that Edinburgh gave to Borrow. Rather 
may we seek it in the acquaintanceship with the once 
too notorious David Haggart. Seven years later than 
this all the peoples of the three kingdoms were discuss- 
ing David Haggart, the Scots Jack Sheppard, the 
clever young prison-breaker, who was hanged at Edin- 
burgh in 1821 for killing his jailer in Dumfries prison. 
How much David Haggart filled the imagination of 
every one who could read in the early years of last 



46 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

century is demonstrated by a reference to the Library 
Catalogue of the British Museum, where we find 
pamphlet after pamphlet, broadsheet after broadsheet, 
treating of the adventures, trial, and execution of this 
youthful jailbird. Even George Combe, the phreno- 
logist, most famous in his day, sat in judgment upon 
the young man while he was in prison, and published a 
pamphlet which made a great impression upon prison 
reformers. Combe submitted his observations to 
Haggart in jail, and told the prisoner indeed that he 
had a greater development of the organs of benevolence 
and justice than he had anticipated. There cannot 
be a doubt but that Combe started in a measure, 
through his treatment of this case, the theory that 
many of our methods of punishment led to the making 
of habitual criminals.^ But by far the most valuable 
publication with regard to Haggart is one that Borrow 
must have read in his youth. This was a life of 
Haggart written by himself,^ a little book that had a 

* Phrenological Observations on the Cerebral Development of David Haggart, 
who was lately executed at Edinburgh for murder, and whose life has since been 
published. By George Combe, Esq. Edinburgh : W. aud C. Tait, 1821. 

^ The Life of David Haggart, alias John Wilson, alius John Morison, alias 
Barney M'Cone, alias John M'Colgan, alias Daniel O'Brien, alias The Switcher, 
written by himself while under sentence of death. Edinburgh : Printed for 
W. and C. Tait by James Ballantyne and Co., 1821. 

In the British Museum Library there is a copy with an autograph note by 
Lord Cockburn on the fly-leaf, which runs as follows : 

'This youngster was my client when he was tried and convicted. He was 
a great villain. His life is almost all lies, and its chief curiosity consists in 
the strange spirit of lying, the indulgence of which formed his chief pleasure 
to the very last. The manuscript poem and picture of himself (bound up at 
the end of the Life) were truly composed and written by him. Being an 
enormous miscreant the phrenologists got hold of him, and made the notorious 
facts of his character into evidence of the truth of their system. He affected 
some decent poetry just before he was hanged, and therefore the Saints took 
up his memory and wrote monodies on him. His piety and the composition 
of the lies in this book broke out at the same time. H. C 



A WANDERING CHILDHOOD 47 

wide circulation, and containing a preface by George 
Robertson, Writer to the Signet, dated Edinburgh, 
20th July 1821. Mr. Robertson tells us that a portion 
of the story was written by Haggart, and the remainder 
taken down from his dictation. The profits of this 
book, Haggart arranged, were to go in part to the 
school of the jail in which he was confined, and part 
to be devoted to the welfare of his younger brothers 
and sister. From this little biography we learn that 
Haggart was born in Golden Acre, near Canon-Mills, 
in the county of Edinburgh in 1801, his father, John 
Haggart, being a gamekeeper, and in later years a dog- 
trainer. The boy was at school under Mr. Robin 
Gibson at Canon-Mills for two years. He left school 
at ten years of age, and from that time until his execu- 
tion seems to have had a continuous career of thieving. 
He tells us that before he was eleven years old he had 
stolen a bantam cock from a woman belonging to the 
New Town of Edinburgh. He went with another boy 
to Currie, six miles from Edinburgh, and there stole a 
pony, but this was afterwards returned. When but 
twelve years of age he attended Leith races, and it was 
here that he enlisted in the Norfolk Militia, then 
stationed in Edinburgh Castle. This may very well 
have brought him into contact with Borrow in the 
way described in Lavengj^o. He was only, however, 
in the regiment for a year, for when it was sent back 
to England the Colonel in command of it obtained 
young Haggart's discharge. These dates coincide 
with Borrow's presence in Edinburgh. Haggart's 
history for the next five or six years was in truth 
merely that of a wandering pickpocket, sometimes in 
Scotland, sometimes in England, and finally he became 
a notorious burglar. Incidentally he refers to a girl 



48 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

with whom he was in love. Her name was Mary Hill. 
She belonged to Ecclefechan, which Haggart more 
than once visited. He must therefore have known 
Carlyle, who had not then left his native village. In 
1820 we find him in Edinburgh, carrying on the same 
sort of depredations both there and at Leith — now he 
steals a silk plaid, now a greatcoat, and now a silver 
teapot. These thefts, of course, landed him in jail, out 
of which he breaks rather dramatically, fleeing with a 
companion to Kelso. He had, indeed, more than one 
experience of jail. Finally, we find him in the prison 
of Dumfries destined to stand his trial for ' one act of 
house-breaking, eleven cases of theft, and one of prison- 
breaking.' While in prison at Dumfries he planned 
another escape, and in the attempt to hit a jailer 
named Morrin on the head with a stone he unexpectedly 
killed him. His escape from Dumfries jail after this 
murder, and his later wanderings, are the most dramatic 
part of his book. He fled through Carlisle to New- 
castle, and then thought that he would be safer if he 
returned to Scotland, where he found the rewards that 
were offered for his arrest faced him wherever he went. 
He turned up again in Edinburgh, where he seems to 
have gone about freely, although reading everywhere 
the notices that a reward of seventy guineas was offered 
for his apprehension. Then he fled to Ireland, where he 
thought that his safety was assured. At Dromore he 
was arrested and brought before the magistrate, but he 
spoke with an Irish brogue, and declared that his name 
was John M'Colgan, and that he came from Armagh. 
He escaped from Dromore jail by jumping through a 
window, and actually went so far as to pay three pound 
ten shillings for his passage to America, but he was 
afraid of the sea, and changed his mind, and lost his 



A WANDERING CHILDHOOD 49 

passage money at the last moment. After this he 
made a tour right through Ireland, in spite of the fact 
that the Dublin Htie and Cry had a description of his 
person which he read more than once. His assurance 
was such that in TuUamore he made a pig-driver 
apologise before the magistrate for charging him with 
theft, although he had been living on nothing else all 
the time he was in Ireland. Finally, he was captured, 
being recognised by a policeman from Edinburgh. 
He was brought from Ireland to Dumfries, landed 
in Calton jail, Edinburgh, and was tried and executed. 
In addition to composing this biography Haggart wrote 
while in Edinburgh jail a rather long set of verses, of 
which I give the following two as specimens (the 
original autograph is in Lord Cockburn's copy in the 
British Museum) : 

Able and willing, you all will find 
Though bound in chains, still free in mind. 
For with these things I '11 ne 'er be grieved 
Although of freedom I 'm bereaved. 

Now for the crime that I 'ra condemn'd. 

The same I never did intend. 

Only my liberty to take. 

As I thought my life did lie at stake. 

D. Ireland and Murtagh. — We may pass over 
the brief sojourn in Norwich that was Borrow's lot in 
1814, when the West Norfolk JMihtia left Scotland. 
When Napoleon escaped from Elba the West Norfolk 
Regiment was despatched to Ireland, and Captain 
Borrow again took his family with him. We find the 
boy with his family at Clonmel from May to December 
of 1815. Here Borrow's elder brother, now a boy of 
fifteen, was promoted from Ensign to Lieutenant, gain- 
ing in a year, as Dr. Knapp reminds us, a position that it 



50 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

had taken his father twelve years to attain. In January 
1816 the Borrows moved to Templemore, returning 
to England in May of that year. Borrow, we see, was 
less than a year in Ireland, and he was only thirteen 
years of age when he left the country. But it seems 
to have been the greatest influence that guided his 
career. Three of the most fascinating chapters in 
Lavengro were one outcome of that brief sojourn, a 
thirst for the acquirement of languages was another, 
and perhaps a taste for romancing a third. Borrow 
never came to have the least sympathy with the Irish 
race, or its national aspirations. As the son of a half- 
educated soldier he did not come in contact with any 
but the vagabond element of Ireland, exactly as his 
father had done before him.^ Captain Borrow was 
asked on one occasion what language is being 
spoken : 

' Irish,'' said my father with a loud voice, ' and a bad language 
it is. . . . There 's one part of London where all the Irish live — 
at least the worst of them — and there they hatch their villainies 
to speak this tongue.' 

And Borrow followed his father's prejudices throughout 
his life, although in the one happy year in which he 
wrote JVte Bible in Spain he was able to do justice to 
the country that had inspired so much of his work : 

Honour to Ireland and her 'hundred thousand welcomes'! 
Her fields have long been the greenest in the world ; her daughters 
the fairest; her sons the bravest and most eloquent. May they 
never cease to be so.^ 

In later years Orangemen were to him the only attrac- 
tive element in the life of Ireland, and we may be sure 

^ Although Captain Borrow was never as ignorant as one or two of 
Sorrow's biographers^ who call the Irish language 'Erse.' 
* The Bible in Spain, ch. xx. 



A WANDERING CHILDHOOD 51 

that he was not displeased when his stepdaughter 
married one of them. Yet the creator of Uterature 
works more wisely than he knows, and Borrow's books 
have won the wise and benign appreciation of many an 
Irish and Roman Catholic reader, whose nationality 
and religion Borrow would have anathematised. Irish- 
men may forgive Borrow much, because he was one 
of the first of modern English writers to take their 
language seriously.^ It is true that he had but the 
most superficial knowledge of it. He admits — in 
Wild Wales — that he only knew it 'by ear.' The 
abundant Irish literature that has been so diligently 
studied during the last quarter of a century was a 
closed book to Borrow, whose few translations from the 
Irish have but little value. Yet the very appreciation 
of Irish as a language to be seriously studied in days 
before Dr. Sigerson, Dr. Douglas Hyde, and Dr. Kuno 
Meyer had waxed enthusiastic and practical kindles 
our gratitude. Then what a character is INIurtagh. 
We are sure there was a JMurtagh, although, unlike 
Borrow's other boyish and vagabond friend Haggart, 
we know nothing about him but what Borrow has to 
tell. Yet what a picture is this where Murtagh wants 
a pack of cards : 

' I say, Murtagh ! ' 
' Yes, Shorsha dear ! "■ 

^ Dr. Johnson was the first as Borrow was the second to earn this dis- 
tinction. Johnson, as reported by Boswell, says : 

' I have long ivished that the Irish literature were cultivated. Ireland is 
known by tradition to have been once the seat of piety and learning, and surely 
it would be very acceptable to all those who are curious on the origin ofnutious or 
the affinities of languages to be further informed of the evolution of a people so 
ancient and once so illustrious. I hope that yon will continue to cultivate this 
kind of learning which has too long been neglected, and which, if it be suffered to 
remain in oblivion for another century, may perhaps never be retrieved.' 



52 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

* I have a pack of cards.' 

* You don't say so, Shorsha ma vourneen ? — you don't say that 
you have cards fifty-two?' 

' I do, though ; and they are quite new — never been once 
used.' 

' And you '11 be lending them to me, I warrant ? ' 

' Don't think it ! — But I '11 sell them to you, joy, if you like.' 

' Hanam mon Dioul ! am I not after telling you that I have 
no money at all ? ' 

' But you have as good as money, to me, at least ; and I '11 
take it in exchange.' 

' What 's that, Shorsha dear ? ' 

' Irish ! ' 

' Irish ? ' 

' Yes, you speak Irish ; I heard you talking it the other day 
to the cripple. You shall teach me Irish.' 

' And is it a language-master you 'd be making of me 'f 

'To be sure ! — what better can you do ? — it would help you to 
pass your time at school. You can't learn Greek, so you must 
teach Irish ! ' 

Before Christmas, Murtagh was playing at cards with his 
brother Denis, and I could speak a considerable quantity of 
broken Irish. ^ 

With what distrust as we learn again and again in 
Lavengro did Captain Borrow follow his son's inclina- 
tion towards languages, and especially the Irish 
language, in his early years, although seeing that he 
was well grounded in Latin. Little did the worthy 
Captain dream that this, and this alone, was to carry 
down his name through the ages : 

Ah, that Irish ! How frequently do circumstances, at first 
sight the most trivial and unimportant, exercise a mighty and 
permanent influence on our habits and pursuits ! — how frequently 
is a stream turned aside from its natural course by some little 
rock or knoll, causing it to make an abrupt turn ! On a wild 

* Lavengro. 



A AVANDERING CHILDHOOD 53 

road in Ireland I had heard Irish spoken for the first time ; and I 
was seized with a desire to learn Irish, the acquisition of which, in 
my case, became the stepping-stone to other languages. I had 
previously learnt Latin, or rather Lilly ; but neither Latin nor 
Lilly made me a philologist. 

Borrow was never a philologist, but this first inclination 
was to lead him to Spanish, to Welsh, and above all 
to Romany, and to make of him the most beloved 
traveller and the strangest vagabond in all English 
literature. 



CHAPTER V 

GEORGE BORROWS NORWICH— THE GURNEYS 

Norwich may claim to be one of the most fascinating 
cities in the kingdom. To-day it is known to the 
wide world by its canaries and its mustard, although 
its most important industry is the boot trade, in which 
it employs some eight thousand persons. To the 
visitor it has many attractions. The lovely cathedral 
with its fine Norman arches, the Erpingham Gate so 
splendidly Gothic, the noble Castle Keep so imposingly 
placed with the cattle-market below — these are all as 
Borrow saw them nearly a century ago. So also is the 
church of St. Peter Mancroft, where Sir Thomas 
Browne lies buried. And to the picturesque Mouse- 
hold Heath you may still climb and recall one of the 
first struggles for liberty and progress that past ages 
have seen, the Norfolk rising under Bobert Kett which 
has only not been glorified in song and in picture, 
because — 

Treason doth never prosper — what 's the reason ? 
Why if it prosper none dare call it treason. 

And Kett's so-called rebellion was destined to failure, 

and its leader to cruel martyrdom. Household Heath 

has been made the subject of paintings by Turner and 

Crome, and of fine word pictures by George Borrow. 

When Borrow and his parents lighted upon Norwich 
u 



BORROWS NORWICH— THE GURNEYS 55 

in 1814 and 1816 the city had inspiring literary associa- 
tions. Before the invention of railways it seemed not 
uncommon for a fine intellectual life to emanate from 
this or that cathedral city. Such an intellectual life 
was associated with Lichfield when the Darwins and 
the Edgeworths gathered at the Bishop's Palace around 
Dr. Seward and his accomplished daughters. Norwich 
has more than once been such a centre. The first 
occasion was in the period of which we write, when the 
Taylors and the Gurneys flourished in a region of 
ideas ; the second was during the years from 1837 to 
1849, when Edward Stanley held the bishopric. This 
later period does not come into our story, as by that 
time Borrow had all but left Norwich. But of the 
earlier period, the period of Borrow's more or less fitful 
residence in Norwich — 1814 to 1833 — we are tempted 
to write at some length. There were three separate 
literary and social forces in Norwich in the first 
decades of the nineteenth century — the Gurneys of 
Earlham, the Taylor- Austin group, and William 
Taylor, who was in no way related to JNIrs. John Taylor 
and her daughter, Sarah Austin. The Gurneys were 
truly a remarkable family, destined to leave their 
impress upon Norwich and upon a wider world. At 
the time of his marriage in 1778 to Catherine Bell, 
John Gurney, wool-stapler of Norwich, took his young 
wife, whose face has been preserved in a canvas by 
Gainsborough, to live in the old Court House in Mag- 
dalen Street, which had been the home of two genera- 
tions of the Gurney family. In 1786 John Gurney 
went with his continually growing family to live at 
Earlham Hall, some two or three miles out of 
Norwich on the Earlham Road. Here that family of 
eleven children — one boy had died in infancy — grew 



56 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

up. Not one but has an interesting history, which is 
recorded by Mr. Augustus Hare and other writers.^ 
Elizabeth, the fourth daughter, married Joseph Fry, 
and as Elizabeth Fry attained to a world-wide fame 
as a prison reformer. Hannah married Sir Thomas 
Fowell Buxton of Slave Trade Abolition ; Richenda, 
the Rev. Francis Cunningham, who sent George Borrow 
upon his career ; while Louisa married Samuel Hoare 
of Hampstead. Of her Joseph John Gurney said at 
her death in 1836 that she was ' superior in point of 
talent to any other of my father's eleven children. ' It 
is with the eleventh child, however, that we have mainly 
to do, for this son, Joseph John Gurney, alone appears 
in Sorrow's pages. The picture of these eleven Quaker 
children growing up to their various destinies under the 
roof of Earlham Hall is an attractive one. Men and 
women of all creeds accepted the catholic Quaker's 
hospitality. Mrs. Opie and a long list of worthies of 
the past come before us, and when Mr. Gurney, in 
1802, took his six unmarried daughters to the Lakes 
Old Crome accompanied them as drawing-master. 
There is, however, one picture in the story of unforget- 
table charm, the episode of the courtship of Elizabeth 
Gurney by Joseph Fry, and this I must quote from 
Mr. Augustus Hare's pleasant book : 

Mr. Fry had no intention of exposing himself to the possibility 
of a refusal. He bought a very handsome gold watch and chain, 
and laid it down upon a white seat — the white seat which still 
exists — in the garden at Earlham. ' If Betsy takes up that watch,' 
he said, ' it is a sign that she accepts me : if she does not take it 
up by a particular hour, it will show that I must leave Earlham.' 

* See The Gurney s of Earlham by Augustus J. C. Hare, 2 vols.^ 1895 ; 
Memoirs of Joseph Gurney ; with Selections from his Journal and Correspond- 
ence, edited by Joseph Bevan Braithwaite, 2 vols.^ 1834. 



BORROWS NORWICH— THE GURNEYS 57 

The six sisters concealed themselves in six laurel-bushes in different 
parts of the grounds to watch. One can imagine their intense 
curiosity and anxiety. At last the tall, graceful Betsy, lier flaxen 
hair now hidden under a Quaker cap, shyly emerged upon the 
gravel walk. She seemed scarcely conscious of her surroundings, 
as if, ' on the wings of prayer, she was being wafted into the 
unseen.' But she reached the garden seat, and there, in the sun- 
shine, lay the glittering new watch. The sight of it recalled her 
to earth. She could not, could not, take it, and fled swiftly back 
to the house. But the six sisters remained in their laurel-bushes. 
They felt sure she would revoke, and they did not watch in vain. 
An hour elapsed, in whicii her father urged her, and in which con- 
science seemed to drag her forwards. Once again did the anxious 
sisters see Betsy emerge from the house, with more faltering steps 
this time, but still inwardly praying, and slowly, tremblingly, they 
saw her take up the watch, and the deed was done. She never 
afterwards regretted it, thougii it was a bitter pang to her when 
she collected her eighty-six children in the garden at Earlham 
and bade them farewell, and though she wrote in her journal as a 
bride, ' I cried heartily on leaving Norwich ; the very stones in 
the street were dear to me.'' 

In 1803 — the year of Borrow 's birth — John Gurney 
became a partner in the great London Bank of Overend 
and Gurney, and his son, Joseph John, in that same 
year went up to Oxford. In 1809 Joseph returned to 
take his place in the bank, and to preside over the 
family of unmarried sisters at Earlham, father and 
mother being dead, and many members of the family 
distributed. Incidentally, we are told by JNIr. Hare 
that the Gurneys of Earlham at this time drove out 
with four black horses, and that when Bishop Bathurst, 
Stanley's predecessor, required horses for State occasions 
to drive him to the cathedral, he borrowed these, and 
the more modest episcopal horses took the Quaker 
family to their meeting-house. It does not come 
within the scope of this book, discursive as I choose to 



58 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

make it, to trace the fortunes of these eleven remark- 
able Gurney children, or even of Borrow's momentary 
acquaintance, Joseph John Gurney. His residence at 
Earlham, and his life of philanthropy, are a romance in 
a way, although one wonders whether if the name of 
Gurney had not been associated with so much of virtue 
and goodness the crash that came long after Joseph 
John Gurney 's death would have been quite so full of 
affliction for a vast multitude. Joseph John Gurney 
died in 1847, in his fifty-ninth year; his sister, Mrs. 
Fry, had died two years earlier. The younger brother 
and twelfth child— Joseph John being the eleventh — 
Daniel Gurney, the last of the twelve children, lived 
till 1880, aged eighty-nine. He had outlived by many 
years the catastrophe to the great banking firm with 
which the name of Gurney is associated. This great firm 
of Overend and Gurney, of which yet another brother, 
Samuel, was the moving spirit, was organised nine years 
after his death — in 1865 — into a joint-stock company, 
which failed to the amount of eleven millions in 186G. 
At the time of the failure, which affected all England, 
much as did the Liberator smash a generation later, 
the only Gurney in the directorate was Daniel Gurney, 
to whom his sister, Lady Buxton, allowed a pension 
of £2000 a year. This is a long story to tell by way of 
introduction to one episode in Lavengro. Dr. Knapp 
places this episode in the year 1817, when Borrow was 
but fourteen years of age and Gurney was twenty-nine. 
I need not apologise at this point for a very lengthy 
quotation from a familiar book : 

At some distance from the city, behind a range of hilly ground 
which rises towards the south-west, is a small river, the waters of 
which, after many meanderings, eventually enter the principal 
river of the district, and assist to swell the tide which it rolls down 



BORROWS NORWICH— THE GURNEYS 59 

to the ocean. It is a sweet rivulet, and pleasant it is to trace its 
course from its spring-head, high up in the remote regions of 
Eastern Anglia, till it arrives in the valley behind yon rising 
ground ; and pleasant is that valley, truly a good spot, but most 
lovely where yonder bridge crosses the little stream. Beneath its 
arch the waters rush garrulously into a blue pool, and are there 
stilled for a time, for the pool is deep, and they appear to have 
sunk to sleep. Farther on, however, you hear their voice again, 
where they ripple gaily over yon gravelly shallow. On the left 
the hill slopes gently down to the margin of the stream. On the 
right is a green level, a smiHng meadow, grass of the richest decks 
the side of the slope ; mighty trees also adorn it, giant elms, the 
nearest of which, when the sun is nigh its meridian, fling a broad 
shadow upon the face of the pool ; through yon vista you catch a 
glimpse of the ancient brick of an old English hall. It has a 
stately look, that old building, indistinctly seen, as it is, among 
those umbrageous trees ; you might almost suppose it an earPs 
home ; and such it was, or rather upon its site stood an earPs 
home, in days of old, for there some old Kemp, some Sigurd, or 
Thorkild, roaming in quest of a hearthstead, settled down in the 
grey old time, when Thor and Freya were yet gods, and Odin was 
a portentous name. Yon old hall is still called the Earl's Home, 
though the hearth of Sigurd is now no more, and the bones of the 
old Kemp, and of Sigrith his dame, have been mouldering for a 
thousand years in some neighbouring knoll ; perhaps yonder, 
where those tall Norwegian pines shoot up so boldly into the air. 
It is said that the old earPs galley was once moored where is now 
that blue pool, for the waters of that valley were not always sweet ; 
yon valley was once an arm of the sea, a salt lagoon, to which the 
war-barks of ' Sigurd, in search of a home,' found their way. 

I was in the habit of spending many an hour on the banks of 
that rivulet with my rod in my hand, and, when tired with 
angling, would stretch myself on the grass, and gaze upon the 
waters as they glided past, and not unfrequently, divesting myself 
of my dress, I would plunge into the deep pcol which I have 
already mentioned, for I had long since learned to swim. And it 
came to pass, that on one hot summer's day, after bathing in the 
pool, I passed along the meadow till I came to a shallow part, and, 
wading over to the opposite side, I adjusted my dress, and com- 



60 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

menced fishing in another pool, beside which was a small clump of 
hazels. 

And there I sat upon the bank, at the bottom of the hill 
which slopes down from ' the Earl's Home ' ; my float was on the 
waters, and my back was towards the old hall. I drew up many 
fish, small and great, which I took from off the hook mechanically, 
and flung upon the bank, for I was almost unconscious of what I 
was about, for my mind was not with my fish. I was thinking of 
my earlier years — of the Scottish crags and the heaths of Ireland 
— and sometimes my mind would dwell on my studies — on the 
sonorous stanzas of Dante, rising and falling like the waves of the 
sea — or would strive to remember a couplet or two of poor 
Monsieur Boileau. 

' Canst thou answer to thy conscience for pulling all those fish 
out of the water and leaving them to gasp in the sun .'* ' said a 
voice, clear and sonorous as a bell. 

I started, and looked round. Close behind me stood the tall 
figure of a man, dressed in raiment of quaint and singular fashion, 
but of goodly materials. He was in the prime and vigour of 
manhood ; his features handsome and noble, but full of calmness 
and benevolence ; at least I thought so, though they were some- 
what shaded by a hat of finest beaver, with broad drooping 
eaves. 

' Surely that is a very cruel diversion in which thou indulgest, 
my young friend ? ' he continued. 

' I am sorry for it, if it be, sir,' said I, rising ; ' but I do not 
think it cruel to fish.' 

' What are thy reasons for thinking so .''' 

' Fishing is mentioned frequently in Scripture. Simon Peter 
was a fisherman.' 

'True; and Andrew his brother. But thou forgettest; they 
did not follow fishing as a diversion, as I fear thou doest. — Thou 
readest the Scriptures ? ' 

' Sometimes.' 

' Sometimes ? — not daily ? — that is to be regretted. What 
profession dost thou make ? — I mean to what religious denomina- 
tion dost thou belong, my young friend ?"" 

' Church.' 

' It is a very good profession — there is much of Scripture 



BORROWS NORWICH— THE GURNEYS 61 

contained in its liturgy. Dost thou read aught beside the 
Scriptures ? ' 

' Sometimes,"' 

' What dost thou read besides ? ' 

' Greek, and Dante.' 

' Indeed ! then thou hast the advantage over myself ; I can 
only read the former. Well, I am rejoiced to find that thou hast 
other pursuits beside thy fisliing. Dost thou know Hebrew ? "• 

' No.' 

'Thou shouldest study it. Why dost thou not undertake the 
study ? ' 

' I have no books."" 

' I will lend thee books, if thou wish to undertake the study. 
I live yonder at the hall, as perhaps thou knowest. I have a 
library there, in which are many curious books, both in Greek and 
Hebrew, which I will show to thee, whenever thou mayest find 
it convenient to come and see me. Farewell ! I am glad to find 
that thou hast pursuits more satisfactory than thy cruel fishing."' 

And the man of peace departed, and left me on the bank of 
the stream. Whether from the effect of his words or from want 
of inclination to the sport, I know not, but from that day I 
became less and less a practitioner of that ' cruel fishing."' I rarely 
flung line and angle into the water, but I not unfrequently 
wandered by the banks of the pleasant rivulet. It seems singular 
to me, on reflection, that I never availed myself of his kind invita- 
tion. I say singular, for the extraordinary, under whatever form, 
had long had no slight interest for me : and I had discernment 
enough to perceive that yon was no common man. Yet I went 
not near him, certainly not from bashfulness, or timidity, 
feelings to which I had long been an entire stranger. Am I to 
regret this ? perhaps, for I might have learned both wisdom and 
righteousness from those calm, quiet lips, and my after-course 
might have been widely different. As it was, I fell in with other 
queer companions, from whom I received widely different im- 
pressions than those I might have derived from him. When 
many years had rolled on, long after I had attained manhood, and 
had seen and suffered much, and when our first interview had 
long been effaced from the mind of the man of peace, I visited 
him in his venerable hall, and partook of the iiospitality of his 



62 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

hearth. And there I saw his gentle partner and his fair children, 
and on the morrow he showed me the books of which he had 
spoken years before by the side of the stream. In the low quiet 
chamber, whose one window, shaded by a gigantic elm, looks down 
the slope towards the pleasant stream, he took from the shelf his 
learned books, Zohar and Mishna, Toldoth Jesu and Abarbenel. 

' I am fond of these studies,' said he, ' which, perhaps, is not to 
be wondered at, seeing that our people have been compared to the 
Jews. In one respect I confess we are similar to them : we are 
fond of getting money. I do not like this last author, this 
Abarbenel, the worse for having been a money-changer. I am a 
banker myself, as thou knowest.' 

And would there were many like him, amidst the money- 
changers of princes ! The hall of many an earlj lacks the bounty, 
the palace of many a prelate the piety and learning, which adorn 
the quiet Quaker's home ! 

It is doubtful if Borrow met Joseph John Gurney 
more than on the one further occasion to which he 
refers above. At the commencement of his engage- 
ment with the Bible Society he writes to its secretary, 
Mr. Jowett (March 18, 1833), to say that he must pro- 
cure from Mr. Cunningham ' a letter of introduction 
from him to .lohn Gurney,' and this second and last 
interview must have taken place at Earlham before his 
departure for Russia. 

But if Borrow was to come very little under the 
influence of Joseph John Gurney, his destiny was to 
be considerably moulded by the action of Gurney 's 
brother-in-law, Cunningham, who first put him in 
touch with the Bible Society. Joseph John Gurney 
and his sisters were the very life of the Bible Society 
in those years. 



CHAPTER VI 

GEORGE BORROWS NORWICH— THE TAYLORS 

With the famous ' Taylors of Norwich ' Borrow seems 
to have had no acquaintance, although he went to 
school with a connection of that family, James Martin- 
eau. These socially important Taylors were in no way 
related to William Taylor of that city, who knew 
German literature, and scandalised the more virtuous 
citizens by that, and perhaps more by his fondness for 
wine and also for good English beer — a drink over 
which his friend Borrow was to become lyrical. When 
people speak of the Norwich Taylors they refer to the 
family of Dr. John Taylor, who in 1733 was elected to 
the charge of the Presbyterian congregation in Nor- 
wich. His eldest son, Richard, married Margaret, the 
daughter of a mayor of Norwich of the name of 
Meadows ; and Sarah, another daughter of that same 
worshipful mayor, married David Martineau, grandson 
of Gaston Martineau, who fled from France at the time 
of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.^ Harriet and 
James Martineau were grandchildren of this David. 
The second son of Richard and Margaret Taylor was 
John, who married Susannah Cook. Susannah is the 
clever Mrs. John Taylor of this story, and her daughter 
of even greater ability was Sarah Austin, the wife of the 

' Tliree Generations of Englishwomen, by Janet Ross, vol. i. p. 3. 

63 



64 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

famous jurist. Their daughter married Sir Alexander 
DufF-Gordon. She was the author of Letters from 
Egypt, a book to which George IMeredith wrote an ' In- 
troduction,' so much did he love the writer. Lady DufF- 
Gordon's daughter, Janet Ross, wrote the biography of 
her mother, her grandmother, and Mrs. John Taylor, in 
Three Generations of Englishwomen. A niece, Lena 
DufF-Gordon (Mrs. Waterfield), has written pleasant 
books of travel, and so, for five generations, this family 
has produced clever women-folk. But here we are 
only concerned with Mrs. John Taylor, called by her 
friends the 'Madame Roland of Norwich.' Lucy 
Aikin describes how she ' darned her boy's grey 
worsted stockings while holding her own with Southey, 
Brougham, or Mackintosh.' One of her daughters 
married Henry Reeve, and, as I have said, another 
married John Austin. Borrow was twenty years of 
age and living in Norwich when Mrs. Taylor died. It 
is to be regretted that in the early impressionable years 
his position as a lawyer's clerk did not allow of his 
coming into a circle in which he might have gained 
certain qualities of savoir faire and Joie de vivre, which 
he was all his days to lack. Of the Taylor family the 
Duke of Sussex said that they reversed the ordinary 
saying that it takes nine tailors to make a man. The 
witticism has been attributed to Sydney Smith, but 
Mrs. Ross gives evidence that it was the Duke's — the 
youngest son of George in. In his Life of Sir James 
Mackintosh Basil Montagu, referring to Mrs. John 
Taylor, says : 

Norwich was always a haven of rest to us, from the literary 
society with which that city abounded. Dr. Sayers we used to 
visit, and the high-minded and intelligent William Taylor ; but 
our chief delight was in the society of Mrs. John Taylor, a most 



BORROWS NORWICH— THE TAYLORS 65 

intelligent and excellent woman, mild and unassuming, quiet and 
meek, sitting amidst her large family, occupied with her needle 
and domestic occupations, but always assisting, by her great 
knowledge, the advancement of kind and dignified sentiment and 
conduct. 

We note here the reference to * the high-minded and 
intelligent William Taylor,' because William Taylor, 
whose influence upon Borrow's destiny was so pro- 
nounced, has been revealed to many by the slanders of 
Harriet Martineau, that extraordinary compound of 
meanness and generosity, of poverty-stricken intelli- 
gence and rich endowment. In her Autobiography, 
published in 1877, thirty-four years after Robberds's 
Memoir of William Taylor, she dwells upon the drink- 
ing propensities of William Taylor, who was a school- 
fellow of her father's. She admits, indeed, that Taylor 
was an ideal son, whose ' exemplary filial duty was a 
fine spectacle to the whole city,' and she continues : 

His virtues as a son were before our eyes when we witnessed 
his endurance of his father's brutality of temper and manners, 
and his watchfulness in ministering to the old man's comfort in 
his infirmities. When we saw, on a Sunday morning, William 
Taylor guiding his blind mother to chapel ... we could forgive 
anything that had shocked or disgusted us at the dinner-table. 

Well, Harriet Martineau is not much to be trusted as 
to Taylor's virtues or his vices, for her early recollec- 
tions are frequently far from the mark. Thus she 
refers under the date 1833 to the fact that : 

The great days of the Gurneys were not come yet. The 
remarkable family from which issued Mrs. Fry and Joseph John 
Gurney were then a set of dashing young people, dressed in gay 
riding habits and scarlet boots, and riding about the country to 
balls and gaieties of all sorts. 

As a matter of fact, in this year, 1833, Mrs. Fry was 



66 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

the mother of fifteen children, and had nine grand- 
children, and Joseph John Gurney had been twice a 
widower. Both brother and sister were zealous phil- 
anthropists at this date. And so we may take with 
some measure of qualification Harriet Martineau's 
many strictures upon Taylor's drinking habits, which 
were, no doubt, those of his century and epoch ; 
although perhaps beyond the acceptable standard of 
Norwich, where the Gurneys were strong teetotallers, 
and the Bishop once invited Father Mathew, then in 
the glory of his temperance crusade, to discourse in his 
diocese. Indeed, Robberds, his biographer, tells us 
explicitly that these charges of intemperance were 
' grossly and unjustly exaggerated.' William Taylor's 
life is pleasantly interlinked with Scott and Southey. 
Lucy Aikin records that she heard Sir Walter Scott 
declare to Mrs. Barbauld that Taylor had laid the 
foundations of his literary career — had started him 
upon the path of glory through romantic verse to 
romantic prose, from IVie Lay of the Last Minstrel to 
Waverley. It was the reading of Taylor's translation 
of Burger's Lenore that did all this. ' This, madam,' 
said Scott, ' was what made me a poet. I had several 
times attempted the more regular kinds of poetry 
without success, but here was something that I thought 
I could do.' Southey assuredly loved Taylor, and 
each threw at the feet of the other the abundant 
literary learning that both possessed. This we find in a 
correspondence which, reading more than a century 
after it was written, still has its charm.^ The son of a 

1 A Memoir of the Life and Writings of William Taylor oj Norwich : Contain- 
ing his Correspondence of many years with the late Robert Southey, Esquire, and 
Original Letters from Sir Walter Scott and other Eminent Literary Men. 
Compiled and edited by J. W. Robberds of Norwich, 2 vols. London : 
•John Murray, 1843. 



BORROWS NORWICH— THE TAYLORS 67 

wealthy manufacturer of Norwich, Taylor was born in 
that city in 1765. He was in early years a pupil of 
Mrs. Barbauld. At fourteen he was placed in his 
father's counting-house, and soon afterwards was sent 
abroad, in the company of one of the partners, to acquire 
languages. He learnt German thoroughly at a time 
when few Englishmen had acquaintance with its litera- 
ture. To Goethe's genius he never did justice, having 
been offended by that great man's failure to acknow- 
ledge a book that Taylor sent to him, exactly as Carlyle 
and Borrow alike were afterwards offended by similar 
delinquencies on the part of Walter Scott. When he 
settled again in Norwich he commenced to write for the 
magazines, among others for Sir Richard Phillips's 
Monthly Magazine, and to correspond with Southey. At 
the time Southey was a poor man, thinking of abandon- 
ing literature for the law, and hopeful of practising in 
Calcutta. The Norwich Liberals, however, aspired to 
a newspaper to be called Tlie Iris. Taylor asked 
Southey to come to Norwich and to become its editor. 
Southey declined and Taylor took up the task. The 
Norwich Iris lasted for two years. Southey never 
threw over his friendship for Taylor, although their 
views ultimately came to be far apart. AVriting to 
Taylor in 1803 he says : 

Your theology does nothing but mischief; it serves only to 
thin the miserable ranks of Unitarianism. The regular troops of 
infidelity do little harm ; and their trumpeters, such as Voltaire 
and Paine, not much more. But it is such pioneers as Middleton, 
and you and your German friends, that work underground and 
sap the very citadel. That Monthly Magazine is read by all the 
Dissenters — I call it the Dissenters'" Obituary — and here are you 
eternally mining, mining, under the shallow faith of their half- 
learned, half-witted, half-paid, half-starved pastors. 



68 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

But the correspondence went on apace, indeed it 
occupies the larger part of Robberds's two substantial 
volumes. It is in the very last letter from Taylor 
to Southey that w^e find an oft-quoted reference to 
Borrow. The letter is dated 12th March 1821 : 

A Norwich young man is construing with me Schiller's 
Wilhelm Tell with the view of translating it for the Press. His 
name is George Henry Borrow, and he has learnt German with 
extraordinary rapidity ; indeed, he has the gift of tongues, and, 
though not yet eighteen, understands twelve languages — English, 
Welsh, Erse, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, Danish, French, 
Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese ; he would like to get into the 
Office for Foreign Affairs, but does not know how. 

Although this was the last letter to Southey that is 
published in the memoir, Taylor visited Southey at 
Keswick in 1826. Taylor's three volumes of the 
Historic Surveij of German Poetry appeared in 1828, 
1829, and 1830. Sir Walter Scott, in the last year of 
his life, wrote from Abbotsford on 23rd April 1832 
to Taylor to protest against an allusion to ' William 
Scott of Edinburgh ' being the author of a translation 
of Goetz von Berlichingen. Scott explained that he 
(Walter Scott) was that author, and also made allusion 
to the fact that he had borrowed with acknowledg- 
ment two lines from Taylor's Lenore for his own — 

Tramp, tramp along the land^ 
Splash, splash across the sea. 

adding that his recollection of the obligation was in- 
finitely stronger than of the mistake. It would seem, 
however, that the name ' William ' was actually on the 
title-page of the London edition of 1799 of Goetz von 
Berlichingen. When Southey heard of the death of 
Taylor in 1836 he wrote : 



BORROW S NORWICH— THE TAYLORS 69 

I was not aware of my old friend's illness, or I should certainly 
have written to him, to express that unabated regard which I 
have felt for him eight-and-thirty years, and that hope which I 
shall ever feel, that we may meet in the higher state of existence. 
I have known very few who equalled him in talents — none who 
had a kinder heart ; and there never lived a more dutiful son, or a 
sincerer friend. 

Taylor's many books are nowall forgotten. His trans- 
lation of Burger's Lenore one now only recalls by its 
effect upon Scott; his translation of Lessing's A^a//m7z the 
Wise has been superseded. His voluminous Historic 
Sm^vey of German Poetry only lives through Carlyle's 
severe review in the FAinhurgh Review ^ against the 
many strictures in which Taylor's biographer attempts 
to defend him. Taylor had none of Carlyle's inspira- 
tion. Not a line of his work survives in print in our 
day, but it was no small thing to have been the friend 
and correspondent of Southey, whose figure in literary 
history looms larger now than it did when Emerson asked 
contemptuously, ' Who 's Southey ? ' ; and to have been 
the wise mentor of George Borrow is in itself to be 
no small thing in the record of letters. There is a 
considerable correspondence between Taylor and Sir 
Richard Phillips in Robberds's Memoir, and Phillips 
seemed always anxious to secure articles from Taylor 
for the Monthly, and even books for his publishing- 
house. Hence the introduction from Taylor that 
Borrow carried to London might have been most 
effective if Phillips had had any use for poor and 
impracticable would-be authors. 

^ Reprinted in Carlyle's Miscellanies. 



CHAPTER Vll 

GEORGE BORROWS NORWICH— THE GRAMMAR 
SCHOOL 

When George Borrow first entered Norwich after 
the long journey from Edinburgh, Joseph John Gurney, 
born 1788, was twenty-six years of age, and William 
Taylor, born 1765, was forty-nine. Borrow was eleven 
years of age. Captain Borrow took temporary lodgings 
at the Crown and Angel Inn in St. Stephen's Street, 
George was sent to the Grammar School, and his 
elder brother started to learn drawing and painting 
with John Crome (' Old Crome ') of many a fine land- 
scape. But the wanderings of the family were not yet 
over. Napoleon escaped from Elba, and the West 
Norfolk Militia were again put on the march. This 
time it was Ireland to which they were destined, and 
we have already shadowed forth, with the help of 
Lavengro, that momentous episode. The victory of 
Waterloo gave Europe peace, and in 1816 the Borrow 
family returned to Norwich, there to pass many quiet 
years. In 1819 Captain Borrow was pensioned — eight 
shillings a day. From 1816 till his father's death in 
1824 Borrow lived in Norwich with his family. Their 
home was in King's Court, Willow Lane, a modest 
one-storey house in a cid de sac, which we have already 
described. In King's Court, Willow Lane, Borrow 
lived at intervals until his marriage in 1840, and his 

70 



NORWICH— THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL 71 

mother continued to live in the house until, in 
1849, she agreed to join her son and daughter-in- 
law at Oulton. Yet the house comes little into 
the story of Borrow's life, as do the early houses of 
many great men of letters, nor do subsequent houses 
come into his story ; the house at Oulton and the 
house at Hereford Square are equally barren of 
association ; the broad highway and the windy heath 
were Borrow's natural home. He was never a 
' civilised ' being ; he never shone in drawing-rooms. 
Let us, however, return to Borrow's school-days, of 
which the records are all too scanty, and not in the least 
invigorating. The Norwich Grammar School has an 
interesting tradition. We pass to the cathedral 
through the beautiful Erpingham Gate built about 
1420 by Sir Thomas Erpingham, and we find the 
school on the left. It was originally a chapel, and the 
porch is at least five hundred years old. The schoolroom 
is sufficiently old-world-looking for us to imagine the 
schoolboys of past generations sitting at the various 
desks. The school was founded in 1547, but the 
registers have been lost, and so we know little of its 
famous pupils of earlier days. Lord Nelson and Rajah 
Brooke are the two names of men of action that 
stand out most honourably in modern times among the 
scholars.^ In literature Borrow had but one school- 
fellow, who afterwards came to distinction — James 
Martineau. Borrow's headmaster was the Reverend 
Edward Valpy, who held the office from 1810 to 1829, 
and to whom is credited the destruction of the school 



* In earlier times we have the names of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of 
Canterbury ; Edward Coke, Lord Chief Justice ; John Caius, the founder of 
Caius College, Cambridge ; and Samuel Clarke, divine and metaphysician ; 
and, indeed, a very considerable list of England's worthies. 



72 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

archives. Borrow's two years of the Grammar School 
were not happy ones. Borrow, as we have shown, was 
not of the stuff of which happy schoolboys are made. 
He had been a wanderer — Scotland, Ireland, and many 
parts of England had assisted in a fragmentary educa- 
tion ; he was now thirteen years of age, and already a 
vagabond at heart. But let us hear Dr. Augustus 
Jessopp, who was headmaster of the same Grammar 
School from 1859 to 1879. Writing of a meeting 
of old Norvicensians to greet the Rajah, Sir James 
Brooke, in 1858, when there was a great ' whip ' of the 
*old boys,' Dr. Jessopp tells us that Borrow, then 
living at Yarmouth, did not put in an appearance 
among his schoolfellows : 

My belief is that he never was popular among them, that he 
never attained a high place in the school, and he was a ' free boy,' 
In those days there were a certain number of day boys at Norwich 
school, who were nominated by members of the Corporation, and 
who paid no tuition fees ; they had to submit to a certain amount 
of snubbing at the hands of the boarders, who for the most part 
were the sons of the county gentry. Of course, such a proud boy 
as George Borrow would resent this, and it seems to have rankled 
with him all through his life. . . . To talk of Borrow as a 
'scholar' is absurd. 'A picker-up of learning's crumbs ' he was, 
but he was absolutely without any of the training or the instincts 
of a scholar. He had had little education till he came to 
Norwich, and was at the Grammar School little more than two 
years. It is pretty certain that he knew no Greek when he 
entered there, and he never seems to have acquired more than 
the elements of that language.^ 

Yet the only real influence that Borrow carried away 
from the Grammar School was concerned with foreign 
languages. He did take to the French master and 

1 ' Lights on Borrow/ by the Rev. Augustus Jessopp, D.D. , Hon. Canon 
of Norwich Cathedral, in The Daily Chronicle, 30th April 1900. 




THE ERPINGHAM GATE AND THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL, NORWICH 



We pass through the Erpingham Gate direct to the Cathedral, the Grammar 

School being on our left. Here it is on our right. Facing the school is a 

statue of Lord Nelson, who was at school here about 1768-70. Borrow was 

at school here 1816-18. 



NORWICH— THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL 73 

exiled priest, Tliomas d'Eterville, a native of Caen, who 
had enaigrated to Norwich in 1793. D'Eterville taught 
French, Italian, and apparently, to Borrow, a little 
Spanish ; and Borrow, with his wonderful memory, 
must have been his favourite pupil. In his edition 
of LavengTO Dr. Knapp publishes a brief dialogue 
between master and pupil, which gives us an amusing 
glimpse of the worthy d'Eterville, whom the boys called 
'poor old Detterville.' In the fourteenth and fifteenth 
chapters of Lavengro he is pleasantly described by 
his pupil, who adds, with characteristic ' bluff,' that 
d'Eterville said ' on our arrival at the conclusion of 
Dante's Hell, " vous serez un jour un grand philologue, 
mon cher."' 

Borrow's biographers have dwelt at length upon 
one episode of his schooldays — the flogging he received 
from Valpy for playing truant with three other boys. 
One, by name John Dalrymple, faltered on the way, 
the two faithful followers of George in his escapade 
being two brothers named Theodosius and Francis 
Purland, whose father kept a chemist's shop in Norwich. 
The three boys wandered away as far as Acle, eleven 
miles from Norwich, whence they were ignominiously 
brought back and birched. John Dalrymple's brother 
Arthur, son of a distinguished Norwich surgeon, 
who became Clerk of the Peace at Norwich in 1854, 
and died in 1868, has left a memorandum concerning 
Borrow, from which I take the followinfif extract ^ : 



^& 



' I was at school with Borrow at the Free School, Norwich, 
under the Rev. E. Valpy. He was an odd, wild boy, and always 



' The whole memorandum on a sheet of note-paper, signed A. D., is in the 
possession of Mrs. James Stuart of Carrow Abbey, Norwich, who has kindly 
lent it to me. 



74 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

wanting to turn Robinson Crusoe or Buccaneer. My brother 
John was about Borrow's age, and on one occasion Borrow, John, 
and another, whose name I forget, determined to run away and 
turn pirates. John carried an old horse pistol and some potatoes 
as his contribution to tlie general stock, but his zeal was soon 
exhausted, he turned back at Thorpe Lunatic Asylum; but Borrow 
went off to Yarmouth, and lived on the Caister Denes for a few 
days. I don't remember hearing of any exploits. He had a 
wonderful facility for learning languages, which, however, he 
never appears to have turned to account. 

James Martineau, afterwards a popular preacher and 
a distinguished theologian of the Unitarian creed, here 
comes into the story. He was a contemporary with 
Borrow at the Norwich Grammar School as already 
stated, but the two boys had little in common. 
There was nothing of the vagabond about James 
Martineau, and concerning Borrow — if on no other 
subject — he would probably have agreed with his sister 
Harriet, whose views we shall quote in a later chapter. 
In Martineau 's ^lemoirs, voluminous and dull, there is 
only one reference to Borrow;^ but a correspondent once 
ventured to approach the eminent divine concerning 
the rumour as to Martineau's part in the birching of 
the author of Jlie Bible in Spain, and received the 
following letter : 

35 Gordon Square^ London^ W.C, December Q, 1895. 
Dear Sir, — Two or three years ago Mr. Egmont Hake (author, 
I think, of a life of Gordon) sought an interview with me, as re- 
puted to be Borrow's sole surviving schoolfellow, in order to gather 
information or test traditions about his schooldays. This was with 
a view to a memoir which he was compiling, he said, out of the 

* This is a contemptuous reference in JMartiueau's own words to ' George 
Borrowj the writer and actor of romance/ in the allusion to Martineau's 
schoolfellows under Edward Valpy. Martineau was at the Norwich Grammar 
School for four years — from 1815 to 1819. See Life and Letters, by James 
Drummond and C. B. Upton, vol. i. pp. 16, 17. 



NORWICH— THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL 75 

literary remains which had been committed to him by his executors. 
I communicated to him such recollections as I could clearly depend 
upon and leave at his disposal for publication or for suppression 
as he might think fit. Under these circumstances I feel that they 
are rightfully his, and that I am restrained from placing them at 
disposal elsewhere unless and until he renounces his claim upon 
them. But though I cannot repeat them at length for public use, 
I am not precluded from correcting inaccuracies in stories already 
in circulation, and may therefore say that Mr. Arthur Dalrymple's 
version of the Yarmouth escapade is wrong in making his brother 
John a partner in the transaction. John had quite too much 
sense for that ; the only victims of Borrow's romance were two or 
three silly boys — mere lackeys of Borrow's commanding will — who 
helped him to make up a kit for the common knapsack by pilfer- 
ings out of their fathers' shops. 

The Norwich gentleman who fell in with the boys lying in 
the hedgerow near the half-way inn knew one of them, and 
wormed out of him the drift of their enterprise, and engaging 
a postchaise packed them all into it, and in his gig saw them 
safe home. 

It is true that I had to hoist (not 'horse') Borrow for his 
flogging, but not that there was anything exceptional or capable 
of leaving permanent scars in the infliction. Mr. Valpy was not 
given to excess of that kind. 

I have never read Lavcngro, and cannot give any opinion about 
the correct spelling of the ' Exul sacerdos' name. 

Borrow's romance and William Taylor s love of paradox would 
doubtless often run together, like a pair of well-matched steeds, 
and carry them away in the same direction. But there was a 
strong — almost wild — religious sentiment in Borrow, of which 
only faint traces appear in W. T. In Borrow it had always a 
tendency to pass from a sympathetic to an antipathetic form. He 
used to gather about him three or four favourite schoolfellows, 
after they had learned their class lesson and before the class was 
called up, and with a sheet of paper and book on his knee, invent 
and tell a story, making rapid little pictures of each dramatis 
persona that came upon the stage. The plot was woven and 
spread out with much ingenuity, and the characters were various 



76 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

and well discriminated. But two of them were sure to turn up in 
every tale, the Devil and the Pope, and the working of the drama 
invariably had the same issue— the utter ruin and disgrace of 
these two potentates, I had often thought that there was a 
presage here of the mission which produced The Bible in Spain. — 
I am, dear sir, very truly yours, James Mautineau.^ 

Yet it is amusing to trace the story through various 
phases. Dr. Martineau's letter was the outcome of 
his attention being called to a statement made in a 
letter written by a lady in Hampstead to a friend in 
Norwich, which runs as follows : 

Uth Nov. 1893. 
Dr. Martineau, to amuse some boys at a school treat, told us 
about George Borrow, his schoolfellow : he was always reading 
adventures of smugglers and pirates, etc., and at last, to carry out 
his ideas, got a set of his schoolfellows to promise to join him in 
an expedition to Yarmouth, where he had heard of a ship that he 
thought would take them. The boys saved all the food they 
could from their meals, and what money they had, and one 
morning started very early to walk to Yarmouth. They got half- 
Avay — to Blofield, I think — when they were so tired they had to 
rest by the roadside, and eat their lunch. While they were 
resting a gentleman, whose son was at the Free School, passed in 
his gig. He thought it was very odd so many boys, some of 
whom he had seen, should be waiting about, so he drove back and 
asked them if they would come to dine with him at the inn. Of 
course they were only too glad, poor boys : but as soon as he had 
got them all in he sent his servant with a letter to Mr. Valpy, 
who sent a coach and brought them all back. You know what a 
cruel man that Dr. V. was. He made Dr. Martineau take poor 
Borrow on his back, 'horse him,' I think he called it, and flogged 
him so that Dr. M. said he would carry the marks for the rest of 
his life, and he had to keep his bed for a fortnight. The other 



' Reprint from an article by W. A. Dutt on ' George Borrow and James 
Martineau ' in The Sphere for 30th August 1902. The letter was written to 
Mr. James Hooper, of Norwich. 



NORWICH— THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL 77 

boys got off with lighter punishment, but Borrow was the ring- 
leader. Those were the 'good old times ■" ! I have heard Dr. M, 
say that not for another life would he go through the misery he 
suffered as ' town boy ' at that school. 

Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who lived next door to 
Borrow in Hereford Square, Brompton, in the 'sixties, 
as we shall see later, has a word to say on the 
point : 

Dr. Martineau once told me that he and Borrow had been 
schoolfellows at Norwich some sixty years before. Borrow had 
persuaded several of his other companions to rob their fathers' 
tills, and then the party set forth to join some smugglers on the 
coast. By degrees the truants all fell out of line and were picked 
up, tired and hungry, along the road, and brought back to 
Norwich School, where condign chastisement awaited them. 
George Borrow, it seems, received his large share liorsed on James 
Martineau's back ! Tlie early connection between the two old 
men, as I knew them, was irresistibly comic to my mind. Some- 
how when I asked Mr. Borrow once to come and meet some 
friends at our house he accepted our invitation as usual, but, on 
finding that Dr. Martineau was to be of the party, hastily with- 
drew his acceptance on a transparent excuse; nor did he ever 
after attend our little assemblies without first ascertaining that 
Dr. Martineau was not to be present.^ 

James Martineau died in 1900, but the last of 
Sorrow's schoolfellows to die was, I think, Mr. William 
Edmund Image, a Justice of the Peace and Deputy 
Lieutenant for Suffolk. He resided at Herringswell 
House, near Mildenhall, where he died in 1903, aged 
96 years. 

Mr. Valpy of the Norwich Grammar School is 
scarcely to be blamed that he was not able to make 
separate rules for a quite abnormal boy. Yet, if he 

1 Life of Frances Power Cobbe as told by Herself, cli. xvii. 



78 GEOKGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

could have known, Borrow was better employed play- 
ing truant and living up to his life-work as a glorified 
vagabond than in studying in the ordinary school 
routine. George Borrow belonged to a type of boy 
— there are many such — who learn much more out 
of school than in its bounds ; and the boy Borrow, 
picking up brother vagabonds in Tombland Fair, and 
already beginning, in his own peculiar way, his language 
craze, was laying the foundations that made Lavengro 
possible. 



CHAPTER VIII 

GEORGE BORROWS NORWICH— THE LAWYER'S OFFICE 

Doubts were very frequently expressed in Borrow's 
lifetime as to his having really been articled to a 
solicitor, but the indefatigable Dr. Knapp set that 
point at rest by reference to the Record Office. Borrow 
was articled to Simpson and Rackham of Tuck's Court, 
St. Giles's, Norwich, * for the term of five years ' — from 
March 1819 to March 1824 — and these five years were 
spent in and about Norwich, and were full of adventure 
of a kind with which the law had nothing to do. If 
Borrow had had the makings of a lawyer he could not 
have entered the profession under happier auspices. 
The firm was an old established one even in his day. 
It had been established in Tuck's Court as Simpson 
and Rackham, then it became Rackham and Morse, 
Rackham, Cooke and Rackham, and Rackham and Cooke ; 
finally, Tom Rackham, a famous Norwich man in his 
day, moved to another office, and the firm of lawyers 
who occupy the original offices in our day is called 
Leathes Prior and Sons. Borrow has told us frankly 
what a poor lawyer's clerk he made — he was always 
thinking of things remote from that profession, of 
gypsies, of prize-fighters, and of word-makers. Yet he 
loved the head of the firm, William Simpson, who must 
have been a kind and tolerant guide to the curious 
youth. Simpson was for a time Town Clerk of Nor- 

79 



80 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

wich, and his portrait hangs in the Blackfriars Hall. 
Borrow went to live with Mr. Simpson in the Upper 
Close near the Grammar School. Archdeacon Groome 
recalled having seen Borrow ' reserved and solitary ' 
haunting the precincts of the playground ; another 
schoolboy, William Drake, remembered him as * tall, 
spare, dark-complexioned.' ^ Here is Borrow's account 
of his master and of his work : 

A more respectable-looking individual was never seen ; he 
really looked what he was, a gentleman of the law — there was 
nothing of the pettifogger about him : somewhat under the middle 
size, and somewhat rotund in person, he was always dressed in a 
full suit of black, never worn long enough to become threadbare. 
His face Avas rubicund, and not without keenness ; but the most 
remarkable thing about him was the crown of his head, which was 
bald, and shone like polished ivory, nothing more white, smooth, 
and lustrous. Some people have said that he wore false calves, 
probably because his black silk stockings never exhibited a wrinkle ; 
they might just as well have said that he waddled, because his 
boots creaked ; for these last, which were always without a speck, 
and polished as his crown, though of a different hue, did creak, as 
he walked rather slowly. I cannot say that I ever saw him walk 
fast. 

He had a handsome practice, and might have died a very rich 
man, much richer than he did, had he not been in the habit of 
giving rather expensive dinners to certain great people, who gave 
him nothing in return, except their company ; I could never dis- 
cover his reasons for doing so, as he always appeared to me a 
remarkably quiet man, by nature averse to noise and bustle ; but 
in all dispositions there are anomalies. I have already said that 
he lived in a handsome house, and I may as well here add that he 
had a very handsome wife, who both dressed and talked exceedingly 
well. 

So I sat behind the deal desk, engaged in copying documents 
of various kinds ; and in the apartment in which I sat, and in the 
adjoining ones, there were others, some of whom likewise copied 

* Norvicensian, 1888, p. 177. 




WILLIAM SIMl'MiN 

From a portrait by Thomas Phillips, R.A. 

Mr. Simpson was Chamberlain of the city of Norwich and Treasurer of the 
county of Norfolk. He was Town-Clerk of Norwich in 1826, and has an 
interest in connection with George Borrow in that Borrow was articled to him 
as a lawyer's clerk and describes him in Wild Wales as ' the greatest solicitor in 
East Anglia — indeed, I may say the prince of all English solicitors.' 

The portrait hangs in the Black Friars Hall, Norwich. 



NORWICH— THE LAWYER'S OFFICE 81 

documents, while some were engaged in the yet more difficult task 
of drawing them up ; and some of these, sons of nobody, were paid 
for the work tliey did, whilst others, like myself, sons of somebody, 
paid for being permitted to work, which, as our principal observed, 
was but reasonable, forasmuch as we not unfrequently utterly 
spoiled the greater part of the work intrusted to our hands.^ 

And he goes on to tell us that he studied the Welsh 
language and later the Danish ; his master said that 
his inattention would assuredly make him a bankrupt, 
and his father sighed over his eccentric and impractic- 
able son. The passion for languages had indeed caught 
hold of Borrow. Among my Borrow papers I find a 
memorandum in the handwriting of his stepdaughter in 
which she says : 

I have often heard his mother say, that when a mere child of 
eight or nine years, all his pocket-money was spent in purchasing 
foreign Dictionaries and Grammars ; he formed an acquaintance 
with an old woman who kept a bookstall in the market-place of 
Norwich, whose son went voyages to Holland with cattle, and 
brought home Dutch books, which were eagerly bought by little 
George. One day the old woman was crying, and told him that 
her son was in prison. ' For doing what ? ' asked the child. ' For 
taking a silk handkerchief out of a gentleman's pocket.' ' Then,' 
said the boy, ' your son stole the pocket handkerchief.? ' ' No dear, 
no, my son did not steal, — he only gly faked.' 

We have no difficulty in recognising here the 
heroine of the Moll Flanders episode in Lavengro. 
But it was not from casual meetings with Welsh 
grooms and Danes and Dutchmen that Borrow ac- 
quired even such command of various languages as was 
undoubtedly his. We have it on the authority of an 
old fellow-pupil at the Grammar School, Burcham, 
afterwards a London police-magistrate, that William 

' Lavengro, ch, xix. 
F 



82 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Taylor gave him lessons in German/ but he acquired 
most of his varied knowledge in these impressionable 
years in the Corporation Library of Norwich. Dr. 
Knapp found, in his most laudable examination of 
some of the books, Borrows neat pencil notes, the 
making of which was not laudable on the part of his 
hero. One book here marked was on ancient Danish 
literature, the author of which, Olaus Wormius, gave 
him the hint for calling himself Olaus Borrow for a 
time — a signature that we find in some of Borrow 's 
published translations. Borrow at this time had aspira- 
tions of a literary kind, and Thomas Campbell accepted 
a translation of Schiller's Diver, which was signed 
*0. B.' There were also translations from the German, 
Dutch, Swedish, and Danish, in the Monthly Magazine. 
Clearly Borrow was becoming a formidable linguist, if 
not a very exact master of words. Still he remained a 
vagabond, and loved to wander over Household Heath, 
to the gypsy encampment, and to make friends with 
the Romany folk ; he loved also to haunt the horse 
fairs for which Norwich was so celebrated ; and he was 
not averse from the companionship of wilder spirits 
who loved pugilism, if we may trust Lavengro, and if 
we may assume, as we justly may, that he many times 
cast youthful, sympathetic eyes on John Thurtell in 
these years, the to-be murderer of Weare, then actually 
living with his father in a house on the Ipswich Road, 
Thurtell, the father, being in no mean position in the 
city — an alderman, and a sheriff in 1815. Yes, there 
was plenty to do and to see in Norwich, and Borrow's 
memories of it were nearly always kindly : 

A fine old city, truly, is that, view it from whatever side you 
will ; but it shows best from the east, where ground, bold and 

1 The Britannia newspaper, 26th June 1851. 



NORWICH— THE LAWYER'S OFFICE 83 

elevated, overlooks the fair and fertile valley in v^^hich it stands. 
Gazing from those heights, the eye beholds a scene which cannot 
fail to awaken, even in the least sensitive bosom, feelings of 
pleasure and admiration. At the foot of the heights flows a 
narrow and deep river, with an antique bridge communicating 
with a long and narrow suburb, flanked on either side by rich 
meadows of the brightest green, beyond which spreads the city ; 
the fine old city, perhaps the most curious specimen at present 
extant of the genuine old English town. Yes, there it spreads 
from north to south, with its venerable houses, its numerous 
gardens, its thrice twelve churches, its mighty mound, which, if 
tradition speaks true, was raised by human hands to serve as the 
grave-heap of an old heathen king, who sits deep within it, with 
his sword in his hand, and his gold and silver treasures about him. 
There is a grey old castle upon the top of that mighty mound ; 
and yonder, rising three hundred feet above the soil, from among 
those noble forest trees, beiiold that old Norman master-work, that 
cloud-encircled cathedral spire, around which a garrulous army of 
rooks and choughs continually wheel their flight. Now, who can 
wonder that the children of that fine old city arc proud of her, 
and offer up prayers for her prosperity ? I myself, who was not 
born within her walls, offer up prayers for her prosperity, that want 
may never visit her cottages, vice her palaces, and that the abomi- 
nation of idolatry may never pollute her temples. 

But at the very centre of Borrows Norwich life was 
William Taylor, concerning whom we have already 
written much. It was a Jew named Mousha, a quack 
it appears, who pretended to know German and Hebrew, 
and had but a smattering of either language, who first 
introduced Borrow to Taylor, and there is a fine dialogue 
between the two in Lavengro, of which this is the closing 
fragment : 

' Are you happy ? ' said the young man. 

'Why, no ! And, between ourselves, it is that which induces 
me to doubt sometimes the truth of my opinions. My life, upon 
the whole, I consider a failure ; on which account, I would not 
counsel you, or anyone, to follow my example too closely. It is 



84 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

getting late, and you had better be going, especially as your 
father, you say, is anxious about you. But, as we may never 
meet again, I think there are three things which I may safely 
venture to press upon you. The first is, that the decencies and 
gentlenesses should never be lost sight of, as the practice of the 
decencies and gentlenesses is at all times compatible with independ- 
ence of thought and action. The second thing which I would wish 
to impress upon you is, that there is always some eye upon us ; and 
that it is impossible to keep anything we do from the world, as it 
will assuredly be divulged by somebody as soon as it is his interest 
to do so. The third thing which I would wish to press upon 
you ' 

' Yes,' said the youth, eagerly bending forward. 

'Is"* — and here the elderly individual laid down his pipe upon 
the table — ' that it will be as well to go on improving yourself in 
German ! ' 

Taylor it was who, when Borrow determined to try 
his fortunes in London with those bundles of unsaleable 
manuscripts, gave him introductions to Sir Richard 
Phillips and to Thomas Campbell. It was in the 
agnostic spirit that he had learned from Taylor that he 
wrote during this period to his one friend in London, 
Roger Kerrison. Kerrison was grandson of Sir Roger 
Kerrison, Mayor of Norwich in 1778, as his son Thomas 
was after him in 1806. Roger was articled, as was 
Borrow, to the firm of Simpson and Rackham, while his 
brother Allday was in a drapery store in Norwich, 
but with mind bent on commercial life in Mexico. 
George was teaching him Spanish in these years as a 
preparation for his great adventure. Roger had gone 
to London to continue his professional experience. He 
finally became a Norwich solicitor and died in 1882. 
Allday went to Zacatecas, Mexico, and acquired 
riches. John Borrow followed him there and met 
with an early death, as we have seen. Borrow and 



NORWICH— THE LAWYER'S OFFICE 85 

Roger Kerrison were great friends at this time ; but 
when Lavengro was written they had ceased to be 
this, and Roger is described merely as an ' acquaint- 
ance ' who had found lodgings for him on his first visit 
to London. As a matter of fact that trip to London 
was made easy for Borrow by the opportunity given to 
him of sharing lodgings with Roger Kerrison at JNIilman 
Street, Bedford Row, where Borrow put in an appear- 
ance on 1st April 1824, some two months after the 
following letter was written : 

To Mr. Roger Kerrison, 18 Milman Street, 
Bedford Row. 

Norwich, Jany. 20, 1824. 

Dearest Roger, — I did not imagine when we separated in the 
street, on the day of your departure from Norwich, tliat we should 
not have met again : I had intended to have come and seen you 
off, but happening to dine at W. Barron's I got into discourse, 
and the hour slipt past me unawares. 

I have been again for the last fortnight laid up with that 
detestable complaint which destroys my strength, impairs my 
understanding, and will in all probability send me to the grave, for 
I am now much worse than when you saw me last. But nil 
desperandum est, if ever ray health mends, and possibly it may by 
the time my clerkship is expired, I intend to live in London, write 
plays, poetry, etc., abuse religion and get myself prosecuted, for I 
would not for an ocean of gold remain any longer than I am forced 
in this dull and gloomy town. 

I have no news to regale you with, for there is none abroad, 
but I live in the expectation of shortly hearing from you, and 
being informed of your plans and projects; fear not to be prolix, 
for the slightest particular cannot fail of being interesting to one 
who loves you far better than parent or relation, or even than the 
God whom bigots would teach him to adore, and who subscribes 
himself. Yours unalterably, George Borrow.^ 

* This letter is in the possession of Mr. J. C. Gould, Trap Hill House, 
Loughton, Essex. 



86 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Borrow might improve his German — not sufficiently 
as we shall see in our next chapter — but he would 
certainly never make a lawyer. Long years afterwards, 
when, as an old man, he was frequently in Norwich, 
he not seldom called at that office in Tuck's Court, 
where five strange years of his life had been spent. 
A clerk in Rackham's office in these later years recalls 
him waiting for the principal as he in his youth had 
watched others waiting.^ 

' Mr. C. F. Martelli of Staple Inn, London, who has so generously placed 
this information at my disposal. Mr. Martelli writes : 

' Old memories brought him to our office for professional advice, and there 
I saw something of him, and a very striking personality he was, and a rather 
difficult client to do business with. One peculiarity I i-emember was that he 
believed himself to be plagued by autograph hunters, and was reluctant to 
trust our firm with his signature in any shape or form, and that we in con- 
sequence had some trouble in inducing him to sign his will. 1 have seen 
him sitting over my fire in my room at that office for hours, half asleep, and 
crooning out Romany songs while waiting for my chief.' 



CHAPTER IX 

SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS 

' That 's a strange man ! ' said I to myself, after I had left the house, 
'he is eiiidently very clever ; but I cannot say that Hike him much with 
his Oxford Reviews and Dairyman's Daughters.' — Lavengro. 

Borrow lost his father on the 28th February 1824. 
He reached London on the 2nd April of the same year, 
and this was the beginning of his many wanderings. 
He was armed with introductions from William Taylor, 
and with some translations in manuscript from Danish 
and Welsh poetry. The principal introduction was to 
Sir Richard Phillips, a person of some importance in 
his day, who has so far received but inadequate treat- 
ment in our own/ Phillips was active in the cause of 
reform at a certain period in his life, and would seem 
to have had many sterling qualities before he was 
spoiled by success. He was born in the neighbour- 
hood of Leicester, and his father was ' in the farming 
line,' and wanted him to work on the farm, but he 
determined to seek his fortune in London. After 
a short absence, during which he clearly proved 
to himself that he was not at present qualified to 
capture London, young Phillips returned to the farm. 
Borrow refers to his patron's vegetarianism, and on 
this point we have an amusing story from his own 

1 The few lines awarded to him iuMumby's Romance of Bookselling are an 
illustration of this. 

87 



88 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

pen ! He had been, when previously on the farm, in 
the habit of attending to a favourite heifer : 

During his sojournment in London this animal had been 
killed ; and on the very day of his return to his father's house, he 
partook of part of his favourite at dinner, without his being 
made acquainted with the circumstance of its having been 
slaughtered during his absence. On learning this, however, he 
experienced a sudden indisposition ; and declared that so great an 
effect had the idea of his having eaten part of his slaughtered 
favourite upon him, that he would never again taste animal food ; 
a vow to which he has hitherto firmly adhered.^ 

Farming not being congenial, Phillips hired a small 
room in Leicester, and opened a school for instruction 
in the three R's, a large blue flag on a pole being his 
' sign ' or signal to the inhabitants of Leicester, who 
seem to have sent their children in considerable num- 
bers to the young schoolmaster. But little money was 
to be made out of schooling, and a year later Phillips 
was, by the kindness of friends, started in a small 
hosiery shop in Leicester. Throwing himself into 
politics on the side of reform, PhiUips now started the 
Leicestei' Herald, to which Dr. Priestley became a con- 
tributor. The first number was issued gratis in May 
1792. His Memoir^ informs us that it was an article 
in this newspaper that secured for its proprietor and 
editor eighteen months imprisonment in Leicester gaol, 

1 Memoirs of the Public and Private Life of Sir Richard Phillipx, King's 
High Sheriff for the City of London and the County of Middlesex, hy a Citizen of 
London and Assistants. Loudon, 1808. This Memoir was published in 1808, 
many years before the death of Phillips, and was clearly inspired and partly 
written by him, although an autograph letter before me from one Ralpii 
Fell shows that the worthy Fell actually received £12 from Phillips for 
'compiling' the book. A portion of the Memoir may have been written by 
another literary hack named Pinkerton, but all of it was compiled under the 
direction of Phillips. 



SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS 89 

but he was really charged with selling Paine's Rights 
of Man. The worthy knight had probably grown 
ashamed of The Rights of 3Ian in the intervening 
years, and hence the reticence of the memoir. 
Phillips's gaoler was the once famous Daniel Lambert, 
the notorious ' fat man ' of his day. In gaol Philhps 
was visited by Lord Moira and the Duke of Norfolk. 
It was this Lord Moira who said in the House of 
Lords in 1797 that ' he had seen in Ireland the most 
absurd, as well as the most disgusting tyranny that any 
nation ever groaned under.' Moira became Governor- 
General of Bengal and Commander-in-Chief of the 
Army in India. The Duke of Norfolk, a stanch 
Whig, distinguished himself in 1798 by a famous 
toast at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Arundel 
Street, Strand ; — ' Our sovereign's health — the majesty 
of the people!' which greatly offended George iii., who 
removed Norfolk from his lord-lieutenancy. Phillips 
seems to have had a very lax imprisonment, as he con- 
ducted the Herald from gaol, contributing in particular 
a weekly letter. Soon after his release he disposed of 
the Herald, or permitted it to die. It was revived a 
few years later as an organ of Toryism. He had 
started in gaol another journal, The 3Iuseuin, and he 
combined this with his hosiery business for some time 
longer, when an opportune fire relieved him of an 
apparently uncongenial burden, and with the insurance 
money in his pocket he set out for London once more. 
Here he started as a hosier in St. Paul's Churchyard, 
lodging meantime in the house of a milliner, where he 
fell in love with one of the apprentices. Miss Griffiths, 
* a native of Wales.' His affections were won, we are 
naively informed in the Memoir, by the young woman's 
talent in the preparation of a vegetable pie. This is 



90 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

our first glimpse of Lady Phillips — ' a quiet, respect- 
able woman,' whom Borrow was to meet at dinner long 
years afterwards. Inspired, it would seem, by the kindly 
exhortation of Dr. Priestley, he now transformed his 
hosiery business in St. Paul's Churchyard into a 
' literary repository,' and started a singularly successful 
career as a publisher. There he produced his long- 
lived periodical. The Monthlij Magaziiie, which attained 
to so considerable a fame. Dr. Aikin, a friend of 
Priestley's, was its editor, but with him Phillips had a 
quarrel — the first of his many literary quarrels — and 
they separated. This Dr. Aikin was the father of the 
better-known Lucy Aikin, and was a Nonconformist 
who suffered for his opinions in these closing years 
of the eighteenth century, even as Priestley did. He 
was the author of many works, including the once 
famous Evenings at Home, written in conjunction with 
his sister, Mrs. Barbauld ; ^ and after his quarrel with 
Phillips he founded a new publication issued by 
the house of Longman, and entitled llie Athenceum. 
Hereupon he and Phillips quarrelled again, because 
Dr. Aikin described himself in advertisements of The 
Athenceum as 'J. Aikin, M.D., late editor of The 
Monthly Magazine.'' Aikin's contributors to The 
Monthly included Capell LofFt, of whom we know too 
little, and Dr. Wolcot, of whom we know too much. 
Meanwhile Phillips's publishing business grew apace, 
and he removed to larger premises in Bridge Street, 
Blackfriars, an address which we find upon many 
famous publications of his period. A catalogue of his 

^ Mr. Arthur Aikin Brodribb in his memoir of Aikin in the Dictionary 
of National Biography makes the interesting but astonishing statement that 
Aikiu's Life of Howard 'has been adopted, without acknowledgment, by a 
modern writer.' Mr. Brodi'ibb apparently knew nothing of Dr. Aikin's 
association with the Monthly Magazine or with the first Athenceum. 



SIR RICHAED PHILLIPS 91 

books lies before me dated ' January 1805.' It includes 
many works still upon our shelves. Almon's 3Ic7noirs 
and Co7n'esp07idence of John Wilkes, Samuel Richard- 
son's Life and Correspondence, for example, several of 
the works of Maria Edgeworth, including her 3Ioral 
Tales, many of the works of William Godwin, includ- 
ing Caleb Williams, and the earlier books of that still 
interesting woman and once popular novelist, Lady 
Morgan, whose Poems as Sydney Owenson bears 
Phillips's name on its title-page, as does also her first 
successful novel The Wild Irish Girl, and other of her 
stories. My own interest in Phillips commenced when 
I met him in the pages of Lady Morgan's 3Iemoirs.^ 
Thomas Moore, I^ady Morgan tells us, 

had come back to Dublin from London, where he had been ' the 
guest of princes, the friend of peers, the translator of Anacreon ! ' 
From royal palaces and noble manors, he had returned to his 
family seat — a grocer's shop at the corner of Little Longford 
Street, Angier Street. 

Here, in a little room over the shop, Sydney heard 
him sing two of his songs, and was inspired thereby 
to write her first novels, St. Clair and The Novice 
of St. Dominick. The first was published in Dublin ; 
over the second she corresponded with Phillips, and 
his letters to her commence with one dated from 
Bridge Street, 6th April 1805, in which he wishes 

* I have no less than four memoirs of Lady Morgan on my shelves : — 
Passages from my Autobiography, hy Sydney, Lady Morgan (Richard Bentley, 
1859); The Friends, Foes, and Adventures of Lady Morgan, by AVilliam John 
Fitzpatrick (W. B. Kelly : Dublin, 1859) ; Lady Morgan: Her Career, Literary 
and Personal, with a Glimpse of her Friends, and A Word to her Calumniators, 
by William John Fitzpatrick (London: Charles J. Skeet, 1860); Lady 
Morgan's Memoirs: Autobiography, Diaries and Correspondence. Two vols. 
(London : W. H. Allen, 18G3). 



92 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

her to send the manuscript of The Novice to him 
as one 'often (undeservedly) compHmented as the 
most liberal of my trade ! ' She determined, fresh 
from a governess situation, to bring the manuscript 
herself. Phillips was charmed with his new author, 
and really seems to have treated her very liberally. 
He insisted, however, on having The Novice cut 
down from six volumes to four, and she was wont 
to say that nothing but regard for her feelings pre- 
vented him from reducing it to three. ^ The Novice of 
St. Dominick was a favourite book with the younger 
Pitt, who read it over again in his last illness. Then 
followed — in 1806 — Sydney Owenson's new novel. 
The Wild Irisli Gi?^l, and it led to an amusing corre- 
spondence with its author on the part of Phillips on 
the one side, and Johnson, who, it will be remembered, 
was Cowper's publisher, on the other. Phillips was 
indignant that, having first brought Sydney into fame, 
she should dare to ask more money on that account. 
As is the case with every novelist to-day who scores 
one success. Miss Owenson had formed a good idea of 
her value, and there is a letter to Johnson in which 
she admitted that Phillips's offer was a generous one. 
Johnson had offered her £300 for the copyright of The 
Wild Irish Girl. Phillips had offered only £200 down 
and £50 each for the second and third editions. 
When Phillips heard that Johnson had outbidden 
him, he described the offer as ' monstrous,' and that it 
was 'inspired by a spirit of revenge.' He would not, 
he declared, increase his offer, but a little later he 
writes from Bridge Street to Sydney Owenson as his 
' dear, bewitching, and deluding Syren,' and promises 
the £300. A few months later he gave her a hundred 

* Memoirs of Lady Morgan, edited by W. Hepworth Dixon. 



SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS 93 

pounds for a slight volume of poems, which certainly 
never paid for its publication, although Scott and 
Moore and many another were making much money 
out of poetry in those days. In any case Phillips did 
not accept Miss Owenson's next story with alacrity, 
in spite of the undoubted success of The Wild Irish 
Gill She no doubt asked too much i'or Ida of Athens. 
Phillips probably thought, after reading the first volume 
in type, that it was very inferior work, as indeed it was. 
Athens was described without the author ever having 
seen the city. After much wrangling, in which the 
lady said that her 'prince of pubhshers,' as she had 
once called him, had * treated her barbarously,' the 
novel went into the hands of the Longmans, who 
published it, not without some remonstrance as to 
certain of its sentiments. The successful Lady Morgan 
afterwards described Ida as a bad book, so perhaps 
here, as usually, Phillips was not far wrong in his 
judgment. A similar quarrel seems to have taken 
place over the next novel, 27te Missionary. Here 
Phillips again received the manuscript, discussed terms 
with its author, and returned it. The firm of Stock- 
dale and Miller were his successful rivals. Later and 
more prosperous novels, O'Donnel in particular, were 
issued by Henry Colburn, and Phillips now disappears 
from Lady Morgan's life. I have told the story of 
Phillips's relation with Lady Morgan at length because 
at no other point do we come into so near a contact 
with him. In Fell's Memoir Phillips is described — in 
1808 — as ' certainly now the first publisher in London,' 
but while he may have been this in the volume of his 
trade — and school-books made an important part of it 
— he was not in mere 'names.' Most of his successful 
writers — Sydney Owenson, Thomas Skinner Surr, 



94 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Dr. Gregory, and the rest — have now fallen into 
oblivion. The school-books that he issued have lasted 
even to our own day, notably Dr. Mavor's Spelling 
Book. Dr. Mavor was a Scotsman from Aberdeen, 
who came to London and became Phillips's chief hack. 
There are no less than twenty of Mavor's school-books 
in the catalogue before me. They include Mavor's 
Histoi'y of England^ Mavor's Universal Histor^y, and 
Mavor's History of Greece. In the 31emoir of 1808 
it is claimed that ' Mavor ' is but a pseudonym for 
Phillips, and the claim is also made, quite wrongfully, 
by John Timbs, who, before he became acting editor of 
the Illusti'ated London News under Herbert Ingram, 
and an indefatigable author, was Phillips's private 
secretary.^ It seems clear, however, that in the case of 
Blair's Catechism and Goldsmith's Geography, and 
many another book for schools, Phillips was ' Blair ' 
and ' Goldsmith ' and many another imaginary person, 
for the books in question numbered about two hundred 
in all. For these books there must have been quite an 
army of literary hacks employed during the twenty 
years prior to the appearance of George Borrow in 
that great army. On 9th November 1807, the Lord 
Mayor's procession through London included Richard 
Phillips among its sheriffs, and he was knighted by 
George iii. in the following year. During his period 
of office he effected many reforms in the City 
prisons. John Timbs, in his Walks and Talks about 
London^ tells us that Phillips's colleague in the 

1 See Timbs's article on Phillips iu his Walks and Talks about London, 
1865. Timbs was wont to recall;, as the late W. L. Thomas of the Graphic 
informed me, that while at the Illustrated London Newshe got so exasperated 
with Herbert Ingram, the founder and proprietoi", that he would frequently 
write and post a letter of resignation, but would take care to reach the office 
before Ingram in the morning in order to withdraw it. 



SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS 95 

shrievalty was one Smith, who afterwards became 
Lord Mayor : 

The personnel of the two sheriffs presented a sharp contrast. 
Smith loved aldermanic cheer, but was pale and cadaverous in 
complexion ; whilst Phillips, who never ate animal food, was rosy 
and healthful in appearance. One day, when the sheriffs were in 
full state, the procession was stopped by an obstruction in the 
street traffic ; when droll were the mistakes of the mob : to Smith 
they cried, ' Here 's Old Water-gruel ! ' to Phillips, ' Here 's Roast 
Beef! something like an Englishman ! ' 

Two volumes before me show Phillips as the 
precursor of many of the publishers of one-volume 
books of reference so plentiful in our day. A 
3IUlion of Facts is one of them, and A Chronology 
of Public Events Within the Last Fifty Years from 
1771 to 1821 is another, while one of the earliest and 
most refreshing guides to London and its neighbour- 
hood is afforded us in A Morning Walk from London 
to Kew, which first appeared in TJie Monthly Magazine, 
but was reprinted in 1817 with the name ' Sir Richard 
Phillips ' as author on the title-page. Phillips was now 
no longer a publisher. Here we have some pleasant 
glimpses of a bygone era, many trite reflections, but 
not enough topography to make the book one of per- 
manent interest. It would not, in fact, be worth 
reprinting.^ 

This, then, was the man to whom George Borrow 
presented himself in 1824. Phillips was fifty-seven 
years of age. He had made a moderate fortune and 
lost it, and was now enjoying another perhaps less 
satisfying ; it included the profits of The Monthly 

^ Another Loudon book before me, whicli bears the imprint ' Richard 
Phillips, Bridge Street,' is entitled The Picture of London for 1811. Mine is 
the twelfth edition of this remarkable little volume. 



96 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Review, repurchased after his bankruptcy, and some 
rights in many of the school-books. But the great 
pubUshing estabhshment in Bridge Street had long 
been broken up. Borrow would have found Taylor's 
introduction to Phillips quite useless had the worthy 
knight not at the moment been keen on a new maga- 
zine and seen the importance of a fresh ' hack ' to 
help to run it. Moreover, had he not written a 
great book which only the Germans could appreciate, 
Twelve Essays on the Phenomena of Nature ? Here, 
he thought, was the very man to produce this book 
in a German dress. Taylor was a thorough German 
scholar, and he had vouched for the excellent German 
of his pupil and friend. Hence a certain cordiality 
which did not win Borrow's regard, but was probably 
greater than many a young man would receive to-day 
from a publisher-prince upon whom he might call 
laden only with a bundle of translations from the 
Danish and the Welsh. Here — in Lavengro — is the 
interview between publisher and poet, with the editor's 
factotum Bartlett, whom Borrow calls Taggart, as 
witness : 

'Well, sir, what is your pleasure?' said the big man, in a 
rough tone, as I stood there, looking at him wistfully — as well 
I might — for upon that man, at the time of which I am speaking, 
my principal, I may say my only hopes, rested. 

' Sir,' said I, ' my name is So-and-so, and I am the bearer of a 
letter to you from Mr. So-and-so, an old friend and correspondent 
of yours.' 

The countenance of the big man instantly lost the suspicious 
and lowering expression which it had hitherto exhibited ; he 
strode forward and, seizing me by the hand, gave me a violent 
squeeze. 

' My dear sir,' said he, ' I am rejoiced to see you in London. 
I have been long anxious for the pleasure — we are old friends, 





Fm^ry Walker 

SIR JOHN BOWRING ix 1826 

From a portrait by John King 

now in the National Portrait 

Gallery. 



JOHN P. HASFEI.D in 1835 

From a portrait by an Unknown 

Artist formerly belonging 10 George 

Borrow. 





WILLIAM TAYLOR 

From a portrait by J. Thomson, 
painted in the ^-ear 182 1, and en- 
graved in Robberds's LifeofTaylor. 



SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS 

Vxo\\\ a portrait by James Saxon, 

painted in 1828, now in the 

National Portrait Gallery. 



FRIENDS OF BORROWS EARLY YEARS 



SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS 97 

though we have never before met. Taggart,^ said he to the man 
who sat at the desk, 'this is our excellent correspondent, the 
friend and pupil of our excellent correspondent."' 

Phillips explains that he has given up publishing, ex- 
cept ' under the rose,' had onty The Montldy Magazine, 
here^ called The Magazine, but contemplated yet 
another monthly, The Universal Review, here called 
The Oxford. He gave Borrow much the same sound 
advice that a publisher would have given him to-day — 
that poetry is not a marketable commodity, and that if 
you want to succeed in prose you must, as a rule, 
write trash — the most acceptable trash of that day 
being The Dairyman's Daughter,^ which has sold in 
hundreds of thousands, and is still much prized by 
the Evangelical folk who buy the publications of the 
Religious Tract Society. Phillips, moreover, asked 
him to dine to meet his wife, his son, and his son's 
wife,^ and we know what an amusing account of that 
dinner Borrow gives in Lavengro. Moreover, he set 
Borrow upon his first piece of hack-work, the Cele- 
brated Trials, and gave him something to do upon The 
Universal Review and also upon The 3Ionthly. The 
U?iiversal lasted only for six numbers, dying in Janu- 
ary 1825. In that year appeared the six volumes of 
the Celebrated Trials, of which we have something to 

^ In Lavengro. 

2 Legh Richmond (1772-1827), the author of The Dairyman s Daughter and 
The Young Cottager, which had an extraordinary vogue in their day. A few 
years earlier than this Princess Sophia Metstchersky translated the former 
into the Russian language, and Borrow must have seen copies when he visited 
St. Petersburg. Richmond was the first clerical secretary of the Religious 
Tract Society, with which The Dairyman s Daughter has always been one of 
the most popular of tracts. 

^ Phillips at his death in 1840 left a widow, three sons, and four daughters. 
One son was Vicar of Kilburn. 



98 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

say in our next chapter. Borrow found Phillips most 
exacting, always suggesting the names of new criminals, 
and leaving it to the much sweated author to find the 
books from which to extract the necessary material : 

In the compilation of my Lives and Trials I was exposed to 
incredible mortification, and ceaseless trouble, from this same rage 
for interference. . . . This was not all ; when about a moiety of 
the first volume had been printed, he materially altered the plan 
of the work ; it was no longer to be a collection of mere Newgate 
lives and trials, but of lives and trials of criminals in general, 
foreiffn as well as domestic. . . . ' Where is Brandt and Struen- 
see ? ' cried the publisher. ' I am sure I don''t know,' I replied ; 
whereupon the publisher falls to squealing like one of Joey's rats. 
' Find me up Brandt and Struensee by next morning, or — ' 
' Have you found Brandt and Struensee ? ' cried the publisher, on 
my appearing before him next morning. ' No,' I reply, ' I can 
hear nothing about them ' ; whereupon the publisher falls to 
bellowing like Joey's bull. By dint of incredible diligence, I at 
length discover the dingy volume containing the lives and trials 
of the celebrated two who had brooded treason dangerous to the 
state of Denmark. I purchase the dingy volume, and bring it in 
triumph to the publisher, the perspiration running down my 
brow. The publisher takes the dingy volume in his hand, he 
examines it attentively, then puts it down ; his countenance is 
calm for a moment, almost benign. Another moment and there 
is a gleam in the publisher's sinister eye ; he snatches up the 
paper containing the names of the worthies which I have intended 
shall figure in the forthcoming volumes — he glances rapidly over 
it, and his countenance once more assumes a terrific expression. 
'How is this.'*' he exclaims; 'I can scarcely believe my eyes — 
the most important life and trial omitted to be found in the 
whole criminal record — what gross, what utter negligence ! 
Where 's the life of Farmer Patch ? where 's the trial of Yeoman 
Patch .? ' 

' What a life ! what a dog's life ! ' I would frequently exclaim, 
after escaping from the presence of the publisher.^ 

1 Lavengro, ch. xxxix. 



SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS 99 

Then came the final catastrophe. Borrow could not 
translate Phillips's great masterpiece, Twelve Essays 
on the Proximate Causes, into German with any real 
effectiveness although the testimonial of the enthusiastic 
Taylor had led Phillips to assume that he could. Borrow, 
as we shall see, knew many languages, and knew them 
well colloquially, but he was not a grammarian, and he 
could not write accurately in any one of his numerous 
tongues. His wonderful memory gave him the words, 
but not always any thoroughness of construction. He 
could make a good translation of a poem by Schiller, 
because he brought his own poetic fancy to the venture, 
but he had no interest in Phillips's philosophy, and so 
he doubtless made a very bad translation, as German 
friends were soon able to assure Phillips, who had at 
last to go to a German for a translation, and the book 
appeared at Stuttgart in 1826.^ Meanwhile, Phillips's 
new magazine, The Universal Review, went on its 
course. It lasted only for a few numbers, as we have 
said — from March 1824 to January 1825 — and it was 
entirely devoted to reviews, many of them written by 
Borrow, but without any distinction calling for com- 
ment to-day. Dr. Knapp thought that GifFord was the 
editor, with Phillips's son and George Borrow assisting. 
GifFord translated Juvenal, and it was for a long time 
assumed that Borrow wished merely to disguise 
Gifford's identity when he referred to his editor as 
the translator of Quintilian. But Sir Leslie Stephen 
has pointed out in Literature that John Carey 
(1756-1826), who actually edited Quintilian in 1822, 
was Phillips's editor, ' All the poetry which I re- 

• Ueber die nachsten Ursachen der materiellen Erscheinungen des Universiims, 
von Sir Richard Phillips, nach dem Englischen hearbeitet von General von 
Theobald uud Prof. Dr. Lebret. Stuttgart, 182G. 



100 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

viewed,' Borrow tells us, * appeared to be published at 
the expense of the authors. All the publications which 
fell under my notice I treated in a gentlemanly . . . 
manner — no personalities, no vituperation, no shabby 
insinuations ; decorum, decorum was the order of the 
day.' And one feels that Borrow was not very much 
at home. But he went on with his Newgate Lives and 
Trials, which, however, were to be published with 
another imprint, although at the instance of Phillips. 
By that time he and that worthy publisher had parted 
company. Probably Phillips had set out for Brighton, 
which was to be his home for the remainder of his life. 



CHAPTER X 

FAUSTUS AND ROMANTIC BALLADS 

In the early pages of Lavengi^o Borrow tells us nearly 
all we are ever likely to know of his sojourn in London 
in the years 1824 and 1825, during which time he had 
those interviews with Sir Richard Phillips which are 
recorded in our last chapter. Dr. Knapp, indeed, 
prints a little note from him to his friend Kerrison, in 
which he begs his friend to come to him as he believes 
he is dying. Roger Kerrison, it would seem, had been 
so frightened by Borrows depression and threats of 
suicide that he had left the lodgings at 16 Milman 
Street, Bedford Row, and removed himself elsewhere, 
and so Borrow was left friendless to fight what he 
called his * horrors ' alone. The depression was not 
unnatural. From his own vivid narrative we learn of 
Borrow 's bitter failure as an author. No one wanted 
his translations from the Welsh and the Danish, and 
Phillips clearly had no further use for him after he 
had compiled his Newgate Lives and Trials (Borrow's 
name in Lavengro for Celebrated Trials), and was 
doubtless inclined to look upon him as an impostor for 
professing, with William Taylor's sanction, a mastery 
of the German language which had been demonstrated 
to be false with regard to his own book. No ' spirited 
publisher ' had come forward to give reality to his 
dream thus set down : 



102 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

I had still an idea that, provided I could persuade any spirited 
publisher to give these translations to the world, I should acquire 
both considerable fame and profit ; not, perhaps, a world-embrac- 
ing fame such as Byron's ; but a fame not to be sneered at, which 
would last me a considerable time, and would keep my heart from 
breaking ; — profit, not equal to that which Scott had made by 
his wondrous novels, but which would prevent me from starving, 
and enable me to achieve some other literary enterprise. I read 
and re-read my ballads, and the more I read them the more I was 
convinced that the public, in the event of their being published, 
would freely purchase, and hail them with the merited applause. 

He has a tale to tell us in Lavengro of a certain Life 
and Adventures of Joseph Sell, the Gf^eat Traveller, 
the purchase of which from him by a publisher at the 
last moment saved him from starvation and enabled 
him to take to the road, there to meet the many 
adventures that have become immortal in the pages of 
Lavengro. Dr. Knapp has encouraged the idea that 
Josejjh Sell was a real book, ignoring the fact that 
the very title suggests doubts, and was probably 
meant to suggest them. In Norfolk, as elsewhere, 
a ' sell ' is a word in current slang used for an im- 
posture or a cheat, and doubtless Borrow meant to 
make merry with the credulous. There was, we may 
be perfectly sure, no Joseph Sell, and it is more reason- 
able to suppose that it was the sale of his translation of 
Klinger's Faustus that gave him the much needed 
money at this crisis. Dr. Knapp pictures Borrow as 
carrying the manuscript of his translation of Faustus 
with him to London. There is not the slightest 
evidence of this. It may be reasonably assumed that 
Borrow made the translation from Klinger's novel 
during his sojourn in London. It is true the pre- 
face is dated 'Norwich, April 1825,' but Borrow did 
not leave London until the end of May 1825, that is to 



'FAUSTUS' 103 

say, until after he had negotiated with ' VV. Simpkin 
and R. Marshall,' now the well-known firm of Simpkin 
and Marshall, for the publication of the little volume. 
That firm, unfortunately, has no record of the trans- 
action. My impression is that Borrow in his wandering 
after old volumes on crime for his great compilation, 
Celebrated Trials, came across the French translation 
of Kiinger's novel published at Amsterdam. From 
that translation he acknowledges that he borrowed the 
plate which serves as frontispiece — a plate entitled 
' The Corporation Feast.' It represents the corpora- 
tion of Frankfort at a banquet turned by the devil 
into various animals. It has been erroneously assumed 
that Borrow had had something to do with the de- 
signing of this plate, and that he had introduced the 
corporation of Norwich in vivid portraiture into the 
picture. Borrow does, indeed, interpolate a reference 
to Norwich into his translation of a not too compli- 
mentary character, for at that time he had no very 
amiable feelings towards his native city. Of the 
inhabitants of Frankfort he says : 

They found the people of the place modelled after so unsightly 
a pattern, with such ugly figures and flat features, that the devil 
owned he had never seen them equalled, except by the inhabitants 
of an English town called Norwich, when dressed in their Sunday''s 
best.i 

In the original German version of 1791 we have the 
town of Nuremberg thus satirised. But Borrow was 
not the first translator to seize the opportunity of 
adapting the reference for personal ends. In the 
French translation of 1798, published at Amsterdam, 
and entitled X^es Aventures du Docteur Faust, the 

* Life and Death of Faustus, p. 69. 



104 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

translator has substituted Auxerre for Nuremberg. 
What makes me think that Borrow used only the 
French version in his translation is the fact that in his 
preface he refers to the engravings of that version, one 
of which he reproduced ; whereas the engravings are in 
the German version as well. 

Friedrich Maximilian von Khnger (1752-1831), who 
was responsible for Borrow's ' first book,' was respon- 
sible for much else of an epoch-making character. It 
was he who by one of his many plays, Sturm und 
Drang, gave a name to an important period of German 
Literature. In 1780 von Klinger entered the service of 
Russia, and in 1790 married a natural daughter of the 
Empress Catherine. Thus his novel, Faust's Leben, 
Thaten und Holletifahrt, was actually first published at 
St. Petersburg in 1791. This was seventeen years 
before Goethe published his first part of Faust, a book 
which by its exquisite poetry was to extinguish for 
all self-respecting Germans Klinger's turgid prose. 
Borrow, like the translator of Rousseau's Confessions 
and of many another classic, takes refuge more than 
once in the asterisk. Klinger's Faustus, with much 
that was bad and even bestial, has merits. The devil 
throughout shows his victim a succession of examples 
of 'man's inhumanity to man.' Borrow's translation 
of Klinger's novel was reprinted in 1864 without any 
acknowledgment of the name of the translator, and 
only a few stray words being altered.^ Borrow no- 

* Faustus: His Life, Death, and Doom : a Romance in Prose, translated from 
the German. London : W. Kent and Co., Paternoster Row, 1864. Borrow's 
Life and Death of Faustus was reprinted in 1840, again with Simpkin's imprint. 
Collating Borrow's translation with the issue of 1864, 1 find that, with a few 
trivial verbal alterations, they are identical— that is to say, the trans- 
lator of the book of 1864 did not translate at all, but copied from Borrow's 
version of Faustus, copying even his errors in translation. There is no 



' FAUSTUS ' 105 

where mentions Klinger's name in his latter volume, 
of which the title-page runs : 

Faustus : His Life, Death, and Descent into Hell. Translated 
from the German. London : W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1825. 

I doubt very much if he really knew who was the 
author, as the book in both the German editions I have 
seen as well as in the French version bears no author's 
name on its title-page. A letter of Borrow's in the 
possession of an American collector indicates that he 
was back in Norwich in September 1825, after, we may 
assume, three months' wandering among gypsies and 
tinkers. It is written from Willow Lane, and is appar- 
ently to the publishers of Faustus : 

As your bill will become payable in a few days, I am willing 
to take thirty copies of Faustus instead of the money. The book 
has been burnt in both the libraries here, and, as it has been talked 
about, I may perhaps be able to dispose of some in the course of a 
year or so. 

This letter clearly demonstrates that the guileless 
Simpkin and the equally guileless Marshall had paid 
Borrow for the right to publish Faustus, and even 
though part of the payment was met by a bill, I think 
we may safely find in the transaction whatever verity 
there may be in the Joseph Sell episode. * Let me 
know how you sold your manuscript,' writes Borrow's 
brother to him so late as the year 1829. And this was 
doubtless Faustus. The action of the Norwich libraries 
in burning the book would clearly have had the sympathy 
of one of its few reviewers had he been informed of the 

reason to suppose that the individual, whoever he may have been, who pre- 
pared the 1864 edition of Faustus for the Press, had ever seen either the 
German original or the French translation of Klinger's book. It is clear 
that he ' conveyed ' Borrow's translation almost in its entirety. 



106 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

circumstance. It is thus that the Literary Gazette for 
16th July 1825 refers to Borrows little book: 

This is another work to which no respectable publisher ought 
to have allowed his name to be put. The political allusions and 
metaphysics, which may have made it popular among a low class 
in Germany, do not sufficiently season its lewd scenes and coarse 
descriptions for British palates. We have occasionally publica- 
tions for the fireside — these are only fit for the fire. 

Borrow returned then to Norwich in the autumn 
of 1825 a disappointed man so far as concerned the 
giving of his poetical translations to the world, from 
which he had hoped so much. No ' spirited publisher ' 
had been forthcoming, although Dr. Knapp's researches 
have unearthed a ' note ' in The 3Ionthly Magazine, 
which, after the fashion of the anticipatory literary 
gossip of our day, announced that Olaus Borrow was 
about to issue Legends and Popular Sujjei^stitions of 
the North, 'in two elegant volumes.' But this never 
appeared. Quite a number of Borrow's translations 
from divers languages had appeared from time to time, 
beginning with a version of Schiller's ' Diver ' in llie 
New Monthly Magazine for 1823, continuing with 
Stolberg's ' Ode to a Mountain Torrent ' in The Monthly 
Magazine, and including the ' Deceived Merman.' 
These he collected into book form and, not to be deterred 
by the coldness of heartless London publishers, issued 
them by subscription. Three copies of the slim octavo 
book lie before me, with separate title-pages : 

(1) Romantic Ballads, Translated from the Danish; and Mis- 
cellaneous Pieces by George Borrow. Norwich : Printed and 
Published by S. Wilkin, Upper Haymarket, 1826. 

(2) Romantic Ballads, Translated from the Danish; and Miscel- 
laneous Pieces by George Borrow, London : Published by John 
Taylor, Waterloo Place, Pall Mall, 1826. 



* ROMANTIC BALLADS' 107 

(3) Romantic Ballads, Translated from the Danish ; and Mis- 
cellaneous Pieces, by George Borrow, London : Published by 
Wightman and Cramp, 24 Paternoster Row, 1826.^ 

The book contains an introduction in verse by Allan 
Cunningham, whose acquaintance Borrow seems to 
have made in London. It commences : 

Sing, sing, my friend, breathe life again 
Through Norway's song and Denmark's strain : 
On flowing Thames and Forth, in flood. 
Pour Haco's war-song, fierce and rude. 

Cunningham had not himself climbed very far up the 
literary ladder in 1825, although he was forty-one years 
of age. At one time a stonemason in a Scots village, 
he had entered Chantrey's studio, and was 'superin- 
tendent of the works ' to that eminent sculptor at the 
time when Borrow called upon him in London, and 
made an acquaintance which never seems to have 
extended beyond tliis courtesy to the younger man's 
Danish Ballads. The point of sympathy of course was 
that in the year 1825 Cunningham had pubhshed IVie 
kSofigs of Scotland, Ancient and 3Iodern. But Allan 
Cunningham, whose Lives of the Most Emine7it British 
Painters is his best remembered book to-day, scarcely 
comes into this story. There are four letters from 
Cunningham to Borrow in Dr. Knapp's Life, and two 
from Borrow to Cunningham. The latter gave his 
young friend much good advice. He told him, for 
example, to send copies of his book to the newspapers 
— to the Literary Gazette in particular, and ' Walter 

' Allan Cunningham, in a letter to Borrow, says, 'Taylor will undertake 
to publish.' But there must have been a change afterwards, for some of the 
London copies bear the imprint Wightman and Cramp. In 191f3 Jarrold and 
Sons of Norwich issued a reprint of Romantic Ballads limited to 300 copies, 
with facsimiles of the manuscript from my Borrow Papers. 



108 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Scott must not be forgotten.' Dr. Knapp thinks that 
the newspapers were forgotten, and that Borrow 
neglected to send to them. In any case not a single 
review appeared. But it is not exactly true that 
Borrow ignored the usual practice of authors so en- 
tirely as Dr. Knapp supposes. There is a letter to 
Borrow among my Borrow Papers from Francis Pal- 
grave the historian, who became Sir Francis Palgrave 
seven years later, which throws some light upon the 
subject : 

To George Borrow 

Parliament St., 17 June 1826. 
My dear Sir, — I am very much obliged to you for the oppor- 
tunity that you have afforded me of perusing your spirited and 
faithful translating of the Danish ballads. Mr. Allan Cunning- 
ham, who, as you will know, is an ancient minstrel himself, says 
that they are more true to the originals and more truly poetical 
than any that he has yet seen. I have delivered one copy to Mr. 
Lockhart, the new editor of the Quarterly Review, and I hope he 
will notice it as it deserves. Murray would probably be inclined 
to publish your translations. — I remain, dear sir, your obedient 
and faithful servant, Francis Palgrave. 

It is probable that he did also send a copy to Scott, 
and it is Dr. Knapp's theory that ' that busy writer forgot 
to acknowledge the courtesy.' It may be that this is 
so. It has been the source of many a literary prejudice. 
Carlyle had a bitterness in his heart against Scott for 
much the same cause. Rarely indeed can the strug- 
gling author endure to be ignored by the radiantly 
successful one. It must have been the more galling in 
that a few years earlier Scott had been lifted by the 
ballad from obscurity to fame. Borrow did not in any 
case lack encouragement from Allan Cunningham : ' I 
like your Danish ballads much,' he writes. * Get out of 



' ROMANTIC BALLADS ' 109 

bed, George Borrow, and be sick or sleepy no longer. 
A fellow who can give us such exquisite Danish 
ballads has no right to repose.'^ Borrow, on his side, 
thanks Cunningham for his ' noble lines,' and tells him 
that he has got *half of his Songs of Scotland by 
heart.' 

Five hundred copies of the Roinantic Ballads were 
printed in Norwich by S. Wilkin, about two hundred 
being subscribed for, mainly in that city, the other 
three hundred being dispatched to London — to Taylor, 
whose name appears on the London title-page, although 
he seems to have passed on the book very quickly to 
Wightman and Cramp, for what reason we are not 
informed. Borrow tells us that the two hundred 
subscriptions of half a guinea ' amply paid expenses,' 
but he must have been cruelly disappointed, as he 
was doomed to be more than once in his career, by 
the lack of public appreciation outside of Norwich. 
Yet there were many reasons for this. If Scott had 
made the ballad popular, he had also destroyed it for a 
century — perhaps for ever — by substituting the novel as 
the favourite medium for the storyteller. Great ballads 
we were to have in every decade from that day to this, 
but never another 'best seller' like 31armion or The 
Lady of the Lake. Our popular poets had to express 
themselves in other ways. Then Borrow, although his 
verse has been underrated by those who have not seen 
it at its best, or who are incompetent to appraise poetry, 
was not very effective here, notwithstanding that the 
stories in verse in Romantic Ballads are all entirely 
interesting. This fact is most in evidence in a case 
where a real poet, not of the greatest, has told the same 
story. We owe a rendering of ' The Deceived Merman ' 

* Knapp's Life, vol. i. 117. 



110 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

to both George Borrow and Matthew Arnold, but how 
widely different the treatment! The story is of a 
merman who rose out of the water and enticed a mortal 
— fair Agnes or Margaret — under the waves ; she 
becomes his wife, bears him children, and then asks to 
return to earth. Arriving there she refuses to go back 
when the merman comes disconsolately to the church- 
door for her. Here are a few lines from the two 
versions, which demonstrate that here at least Borrow 
was no poet and that Arnold was a very fine one : 

GEORGE BORROW MATTHEW ARNOLD 

' Now, Agnes, Agnes list to me, We climbed on the graves, on the 

Thy babes are longing so after thee.' stones worn with rains, 

' I cannot come yet, here must I And we gazed up the aisles through 

stay the small leaded panes. 

Until the priest shall have said his She sate by the pillar; we saw her 

say.' clear: 

And when the priest had said his 'Margaret, hist! come quick we are 

say, here ! 

She thought with her mother at home Dear heart,' I said, ' we are long alone ; 

she 'd stay. The sea grows stormy, the little ones 

' O Agnes, Agnes list to me, moan.' 

Thy babes are sorrowing after thee.' But, ah, she gave me never a look, 

' Let them sorrow and sorrow their For her eyes were sealed on the holy 

fill, book ! 

But back to them never return I Loud prays the priest ; shut stands 

will.' the door. 

Come away, children, call no more ! 
Come away, come down, call no more ! 

It says much for the literary proclivities of Norwich 
at this period that Borrow should have had so kindly a 
reception for his book as the subscription list implies. 
At the end of each of Wilkin's two hundred copies a 
' list of subscribers ' is given. It opens with the name 
of the Bishop of Norwich, Dr. Bathurst ; it includes 
the equally familiar names of the Gurdons, Gurneys, 
Harveys, Rackhams, Hares (then as now of Stow 



'ROMANTIC BALLADS' 111 

Hall), Woodhouses — all good Norfolk or Norwich 
names that have come down to our time. Mayor 
Hawkes, who is made famous in Lavengro by Haydon's 
portrait, is there also. Among London names we find 
' F. Arden,' which recalls his friend ' Francis Ardry ' in 
Lavengro, John Bowring, Borrow 's new friend, and later 
to be counted an enemy, Thomas Campbell, Benjamin 
Haydon, and John Timbs. But the name tliat most 
strikes the eye is that of ' Thurtell.' Three of the family 
are among the subscribers, including Mr. George 
Thurtell of Eaton, near Norwich, brother of the 
murderer ; there also is the name of John Thurtell, 
executed for murder exactly a year before. This would 
seem to imply that Borrow had been a long time 
collecting these names and subscriptions, and doubtless 
before the all-too-famous crime of the previous year he 
had made Thurtell promise to become a subscriber, and, 
let us hope, had secured his half-guinea. That may 
account, with so sensitive and impressionable a man as 
our author, for the kindly place that Weare's unhappy 
murderer always had in his memory. Borrow, in any 
case, was now, for a few years, to become more than 
ever a vagabond. Not a single further appeal did he 
make to an unsympathetic literary public for a period 
of five years at least. 



CHAPTER XI 

CELEBRATED TRIALS AND JOHN THURTELL 

Boimow's first book was Faustus, and his second was 
Romantic Ballads, the one being pubHshed, as we have 
seen, in 1825, the other in 1826. This chronology has 
the appearance of ignoring the Celebi^ated Trials, but 
then it is scarcely possible to count Celebrated Trials^ 
as one of Borrow's books at all. It is largely a compila- 
tion, exactly as the Newgate Calendar and Howell's 
State Trials are compilations. In his preface to the 
work Borrow tells us that he has differentiated the book 
from the Newgate Calendar " and the State Trials ^ by 
the fact that he had made considerable compression. 
This was so, and in fact in many cases he has used the 
blue pencil rather than the pen — at least in the earlier 
volumes. But Borrow attempted something much 
more comprehensive than the Newgate Calendar and 
the State Trials in his book. In the former work the 
trials range from 1700 to 1802 ; in the latter from the 

' Celebrated Trials and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence from 
the Earliest Records to the Year 1825. In six volumes. London : Printed for 
Geo. Knight & Lacey, Paternoster Row, 1825. Price £3, 12s. in boards. 

^ The New and Complete Newgate Calendar or Malefactors Recording Register. 
By William Jackson. Six vols. 1802. 

^ Cobbett and Howell's State Trials. In thirty-three volumes and index, 
1809 to 1828. The last volume, apart from the index, was actually published 
the year after Borrow's Celebrated Trials, that is, in 1826 ; but the last trial 
i-ecorded was that of Thistlewood in 1820. The editors were William 
Cobbett, Thomas Bayly Howell, and his son, Thomas Jones Howell. 

112 



'CELEBRATED TRIALS' 113 

trial of Becket in 1163 to the trial of Thistlewood in 
1820. Both works are concerned solely with this 
country. Borrow went all over Europe, and the trials 
of Joan of Arc, Count Struensee, Major Andre, 
Count Cagliostro, Queen Marie Antoinette, the Due 
d'Enghien, and Marshal Ney, are included in his 
volumes. Moreover, while what may be called state 
trials are numerous, including many of the cases in 
Howell, the greater number are of a domestic nature, 
including nearly all that are given in the Newgate 
Calendar. In the first two volumes he has naturally 
mainly state trials to record ; the later volumes record 
sordid everyday crimes, and here Borrow is more at 
home. His style when he rewrites the trials is more 
vigorous, and his narrative more interesting. It is to 
be hoped that the exigent publisher, who he assures 
us made him buy the books for his compilation out of 
the £50 that he paid for it, was able to present him 
with a set of the State Trials, if only in one of the 
earlier and cheaper issues of the work than the one that 
now has a place in every lawyer's library.^ 

The third volume of Celebrated Trials, although it 
opens with the trial of Algernon Sidney, is made up 
largely of crime of the more ordinary type, and this 
sordid note continues through the three final volumes. 

^ The following note appeared in The Monthly Magazine for 1st July 
1824 (vol. Ivii. p. 557) : 

' A Selection of the most remarkable Trials and Criminal Causes is printing 
in five volumes. It will include all famous cases, from that of Lord Cobliam, 
in the reign of Henry the Fifth, to that of John Thurtell ; and those 
connected with foreign as well as English jurisprudence. Mr. Borrow, the 
editor, has availed himself of all the resources of the English, German, 
French, and Italian languages; and his work, including from 160 to 
200 of the most interesting cases on record, will appear in October next. 
The editor of the preceding has ready for the press a Life of Fuustus, his 
Death, and Descent into Hell, which will also appear early in the next winter.' 

H 



114 GEORGE BORKOW AND HIS CIRCLE 

I have said that Faustus is an allegory of ' man's 
inhumanity to man.' That is emphatically, in more 
realistic form, the distinguishing feature of Celebrated 
Trials. Amid these records of savagery, it is a positive 
relief to come across such a trial as that of poor Joseph 
Baretti. Baretti, it will be remembered, was brought 
to trial because, when some roughs set upon him in 
the street, he drew a dagger, which he usually carried 
' to carve fruit and sweetmeats,' and killed his assailant. 
In that age, when our law courts were a veritable 
shambles, how cheerful it is to find that the jury 
returned a verdict of ' self-defence.' But then Sir 
Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Dr. Johnson, and 
David Garrick gave evidence to character, representing 
Baretti as ' a man of benevolence, sobriety, modesty, and 
learning.' Tliis trial is an oasis of mercy in a desert 
of drastic punishment. Borrow carries on his ' trials ' 
to the very year before the date of publication, and 
the last trial in the book is that of ' Henry Faun- 
tleroy, Esquire,' for forgery. Fauntleroy was a quite 
respectable banker of unimpeachable character, to whom 
had fallen at a very early age the charge of a banking 
business that was fundamentally unsound. It is clear 
that he had honestly endeavoured to put things on a 
better footing, that he lived simply, and had no gam- 
bling or other vices. At a crisis, however, he forged a 
document, in other words signed a transfer of stock 
which he had no right to do, the ' subscribing witness ' 
to his power of attorney being Robert Browning, a clerk 
in the Bank of England, and father of the distinguished 
poet.^ Well, Fauntleroy was sentenced to be hanged 
—and he was duly hanged at Newgate on 30th October 

^ Did the poet, who had an interest in criminology, know of his father's 
quite innocent association with the Fauntleroy trial ? 



'CELEBRATED TRIALS' 115 

1824, only thirteen years before Queen Victoria came 
to the throne ! 

Borrow has affirmed that from a study of the 
Newgate Calendar and the compilation of his Cele- 
brated Trials he first learned to write genuine English, 
and it is a fact that there are some remarkably dramatic 
effects in these volumes, although one here withholds 
from Borrow the title of ' author ' because so much is 
' scissors and paste,' and the purple passages are only 
occasional. All the same I am astonished that no one 
has thought it worth while to make a volume of these 
dramatic episodes, which are clearly the work of Borrow, 
and owe nothing to the innumerable pamphlets and chap- 
books that he brought into use. Take such an episode 
as that of Schening and Harlin, two young German 
women, one of whom pretended to have murdered her 
infant in the presence of the other because she madly 
supposed that this would secure them bread — and they 
were starving. The trial, the scene at the execution, the 
confession on the scaffold of the misguided but innocent 
girl, the respite, and then the execution — these make 
up as thrilling a narrative as is contained in the pages 
of fiction. Assuredly Borrow did not spare himself in 
that race round the bookstalls of London to find the 
material which the grasping Sir Richard Phillips re- 
quired from him. He found, for example. Sir Herbert 
Croft's volume, Love and Madness, the supposed 
correspondence of Parson Hackman and Martha Reay, 
whom he murdered. That correspondence is now 
known to be an invention of Croft's. Borrow accepted 
it as genuine, and incorporated the whole of it in his 
story of the Hackman trial. 

But after all, the trial which we read with greatest 
interest in these six volumes is that of John Thurtell, 



116 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

because Borrow had known Thurtell in his youth, and 
gives us more than one glimpse of him in Lavengro 
and The Romany Rye. We recall, for example, Lav- 
engro's interview with the magistrate when a visitor is 
announced : 

' In what can I oblige you, sir ? ' said the magistrate. 

' Well, sir ; the soul of wit is brevity ; we want a place for an 
approaching combat between my friend here and a brave from 
town. Passing by your broad acres this fine morning we saw a 
pightle, which we deemed would suit. Lend us that pightle, and 
receive our thanks ; "'twould be a favour, though not much to 
grant : we neither ask for Stonehenge nor for Tempe.'' 

My friend looked somewhat perplexed ; after a moment, how- 
ever, he said, with a firm but gentlemanly air, ' Sir, I am sorry 
that I cannot comply with your request."* 

' Not comply ! ' said the man, his brow becoming dark as mid- 
night ; and with a hoarse and savage tone, ' Not comply ! why not .'' "" 

' It is impossible, sir — utterly impossible ! "" 

' Why so .? ' 

' I am not compelled to give my reasons to you, sir, nor to any 
man."" 

' Let me beg of you to alter your decision,"' said the man, in a 
tone of profound respect. 

' Utterly impossible, sir ; I am a magistrate."* 

' Magistrate ! then fare-ye-well, for a green-coated buffer and 
a Harmanbeck."' 

' Sir,"* said the magistrate, springing up with a face fiery with 
wrath. 

But, with a surly nod to me, the man left the apartment ; and 
in a moment more the heavy footsteps of himself and his com- 
panion were heard descending the staircase. 

'Who is that man .?"' said my friend, turning towards me. 

' A sporting gentleman, well known in the place from which I 
come."' 

' He appeared to know you.' 

' I have occasionally put on the gloves with him."" 

' What is his name ? ' 



JOHN THURTELL 117 

In the original manuscript in my possession the name 
' John Thurtell ' is given as the answer to that inquiry. 
In the printed book the chapter ends more abruptly as 
we see. The second reference is even more dramatic. 
It occurs when I.avengro has a conversation with his 
friend the gypsy Petulengro in a thunderstorm — when 
all are hurrying to the prize-fight. Here let Borrow 
tell his story : 

' Look up there, brother ! ' 

I looked up. Connected with this tempest there was one 
feature to which I have already alluded— the wonderful colours 
of the clouds. Some were of vivid green, others of the brightest 
orange, others as black as pitch. The gypsy's finger was pointed 
to a particular part of the sky. 

' What do you see there, brother ? ' 

' A strange kind of cloud."' 

' What does it look like, brother ? '' 

' Something like a stream of blood.' 

' That cloud foreshoweth a bloody dukkeripen.' 

' A bloody fortune ! ' said I. ' And whom may it betide ? ' 

' Who knows ? ' said the gypsy. 

Down the way, dashing and splashing, and scattering man, 
horse, and cart to the left and right, came an open barouche, 
drawn by four smoking steeds, with postillions in scarlet jackets 
and leather skull-caps. Two forms were conspicuous in it — that 
of the successful bruiser, and of his friend and backer, the sporting 
gentleman of my acquaintance. 

' His ! ' said the gypsy, pointing to the latter, whose stern 
features wore a smile of triumph, as, probably recognising me in 
the crowd, he nodded in the direction of where I stood, as the 
barouche hurried by. 

There went the barouche, dashing through the rain-gushes, 
and in it one whose boast it was that he was equal to ' either 
fortune.' Many have heard of that man — many may be desirous 
of knowing yet more of him. I have nothing to do with that 
man's after life — he fulfilled his dukkeripen. ' A bad, violent 
man ! ' Softly, friend ; when thou wouldst speak harshly of 



118 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

the dead, remember that thou hast not yet fulfilled thy own 
dukkeripen ! 

There is yet another reference by Borrow to Thurtell 
in The Gypsies of Spain, which runs as follows : 

When a boy of fourteen I was present at a prize-fight ; why 
should I hide the truth ? It took place on a green meadow, 

beside a running stream, close by the old church of E , and 

within a league of the ancient town of N , tlie capital of one 

of the eastern counties. The terrible Thurtell was present, lord 
of the concourse ; for wherever he moved he was master, and 
whenever he spoke, even when in chains, every other voice was 
silent. He stood on the mead, grim and pale as usual, with his 
bruisers around. He it was, indeed, who got up the fight, as he 
had previously done twenty others ; it being his frequent boast 
that he had first introduced bruising and bloodshed amidst rural 
scenes, and transformed a quiet slumbering town into a den of 
Jews and metropolitan thieves. 

Rarely in our criminal jurisprudence has a murder 
trial excited more interest than that of John Thurtell 
for the murder of Weare — the Gill's Hill Murder, as it 
was called. Certainly no murder of modern times has 
had so many indirect literary associations. Borrow, 
Carlyle, Hazlitt, Walter Scott, and Thackeray are 
among those who have given it lasting fame by com- 
ment of one kind or another ; and the lines ascribed 
to Theodore Hook are perhaps as well known as any 
other memory of the tragedy : 

They cut his throat from ear to ear. 

His brain they battered in, 
His name was Mr. William Weare, 

He dwelt in Lyon's Inn. 

Carlyle's division of human beings of the upper classes 
into * noblemen, gentlemen, and gigmen,' which occurs 



JOHN THURTELL 119 

in his essay on Richter, and a later reference to gig- 
manhood which occurs in his essay on Goethe's Works, 
had their inspiration in an episode in the trial of 
Thurtell, when the question being asked, ' What sort 
of a person was Mr. Weare ? ' brought the answer, ' He 
was always a respectable person.' ' What do you 
mean by respectable ? ' the witness was asked. ' He 
kept a gig,' was the reply, which brought the word 
' gigmanity ' into our language.^ 

I have said that John Thurtell and two members 
of his family became subscribers for Borrow's Romantic 
Ballads;^ and it is certain that Borrow must often have 
met Thurtell, that is to say looked at him from a 
distance, in some of the scenes of prize-fighting which 
both affected. Borrow merely as a youthful spectator, 
Thurtell as a reckless backer of one or other combatant. 
Thurtell's father was an alderman of Norwich living 
in a good house on the Ipswich Road when the son's 
name rang through England as that of a murderer. 
The father was born in 1765 and died in 1846. Four 
years after his son John was hanged he was elected 
Mayor of Norwich, in recognition of his violent ultra- 

^ Another witness attained fame by her answer to the inquiry, 'Was 
supper postponed?' with the reply^ ' No, it was pork.' 

- I have already stated (ch. x. p. Ill) that three members of the Thurtell 
family subscribed for Romantic Ballads. I should have hesitated to include 
John Thurtell among the subscribers, as he was hanged two years before the 
book was published, had I not the high authority of Mr. Walter Rye, but 
recently Mayor of Norwich, and the honoured author of a, History of Norfolk 
Families and other works. Mr. Rye, to whom I owe much of the informa- 
tion concerning the Thurtells published here, tells me that there was only 
this one, 'J. Thurtell.' Borrow had doubtless been appealing for subscribers 
for a very long time. I cannot, however, accept Mr. Rye's suggestion to me 
that Borrow left Norwich because he was mixed up with Thurtell in ultra- Whig 
or Radical scrapes, the intimidation and 'cooping' of Tory voters being a 
characteristic of the elections of that day with the wilder spirits, of whom 
Thurtell was doubtless one. Sorrow's sympathies were with the Tory party 
from his childhood up — following his father. 



120 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Whig or blue and white political opinions. He had 
been nominated as mayor both in 1818 and 1820, but 
it was perhaps the extraordinary ' advertisement ' of his 
son's shameful death that gave the citizens of Norwich 
the necessary enthusiasm to elect Alderman Thurtell 
as mayor in 1828. It was in those oligarchical days a 
not unnatural fashion to be against the Government. 
The feast at the Guildhall on this occasion was attended 
by four hundred and sixty guests. A year before John 
Thurtell was hanged, in 1823, his father moved a violent 
political resolution in Norwich, but was out-Heroded 
by Cobbett, who moved a much more extreme one over 
his head and carried it by an immense majority. It 
was a brutal time, and there cannot be a doubt but 
that Alderman Thurtell, while busy setting the world 
straight, failed to bring up his family very well. John, 
as we shall see, was hanged ; Thomas, another brother, 
was associated with him in many disgraceful trans- 
actions ; while a third brother, George, also a subscriber, 
by the way, to Borrow's Rojnantic Ballads, who was a 
landscape gardener at Eaton, died in prison in 1848 
under sentence for theft. Apart from a rather riotous 
and bad bringing up, which may be pleaded in ex- 
tenuation, it is not possible to waste much sympathy 
over John Thurtell. He had thoroughly disgraced 
himself in Norwich before he removed to London. 
There he got further and further into difficulties, and 
one of the many publications which arose out of his 
trial and execution was devoted to pointing the moral 
of the evils of gambling.^ It was bad luck at cards, 

' The Fatal Effects of Gambling Ejcemplified in the Murder of Wm. Weare 
and the Trial and Fate of John Thurtell, the Murderer, and his Accomplices. 
London : Thomas Kelly, Paternoster Row. 1824. I have a very consider- 
able number of Weare pamphlets in my possession, one of them being a 



JOHN THURTELL 121 

and the loss of much money to Wilham Weare, who 
seems to have been an exceedingly vile person, that led 
to the murder. Thurtell had a friend named Probert 
vsrho lived in a quiet cottage in a byway of Hertford- 
shire — Gill's Hill, near Elstree. He suggested to 
Weare in a friendly way that they should go for a 
day's shooting at Gill's Hill, and that Probert would 
put them up for the night. Weare went home, col- 
lected a few things in a bag, and took a hackney coach 
to a given spot, where Thurtell met him with a gig. 
The two men drove out of London together. Tlie 
date was 24th October 1823. On the high-road they 
met and passed Probert and a companion named 
Joseph Hunt, who had even been instructed by Thurtell 
to bring a sack with him — this was actually used to 
carry away the body — and must therefore have been 
privy to the intended murder. By the time the second 
gig containing Probert and Hunt arrived near Probert's 
cottage, Thurtell met it in the roadway, according to 
their accounts, and told the two men that he had done 
the deed ; that he had killed Weare first by ineffectively 
shooting him, then by dashing out his brains with his 
pistol, and finally by cutting his throat. Thurtell 
further told his friends, if their evidence was to be 
trusted, that he had left the body behind a hedge. 
In the night the three men placed the body in a 
sack and carried it to a pond near Probert's house 
and threw it in. The next night they fished it out 
and threw it into another pond some distance away. 

record of the trial by Pierce Egan, the author of JAfe in London and Boxiana. 
VTalter Scott writes in his diary of being absorbed in an account of the trial, 
while he deprecates John Bull's maudlin sentiment over ' the pitiless assassin.' 
That was in 1826, but in 1828 Scott went out of his way when travelling from 
London to Edinburgh, to visit Gill's Hill, and describes the scene of the 
tragedy very vividly. Lockhart's Life^ ch. Ixxvi, 



122 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Thurtell meanwhile had divided the spoil — some £20, 
which he said was all that he had obtained from 
Weare's body — with his companions. Hunt, it may 
be mentioned, afterwards declared his conviction that 
Thurtell, when he first committed the murder, had 
removed his victim's principal treasure, notes to the 
value of three or four hundred pounds. Suspicion 
was aroused, and the hue and cry raised through the 
finding by a labourer of the pistol in the hedge, and 
the discovery of a pool of blood on the roadway. 
Probert promptly turned informer; Hunt also tried 
to save himself by a rambling confession, and it was 
he who revealed where the body was concealed, 
accompanying the officers to the pond and pointing 
out the exact spot where the corpse would be found. 
When recovered the body was taken to the Artichoke 
Inn at Elstree, and here the coroner's inquest was held. 
Meanwhile Thurtell had been arrested in London and 
taken down to Elstree to be present at the inquest. A 
verdict of guilty against all three miscreants was given 
by the coroner's jury, and Weare's body was buried in 
Elstree Churchyard.^ 

* Elstree had already had its association with a murder case, for Martha 
Keay, the mistress of John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich, was buried 
in the church in 1770. She was the mother of several of the Earl's children, 
one of whom was fiasil Montagu. She was a beautiful woman and a 
delightful singer, and was appearing on the stage at Covent Garden, which 
theatre she was leaving on tlie night of 7th April 1779, when the Reverend 
James Hackman, Vicar of Wiveton in Norfolk, shot her through the head 
with a pistol in a fit of jealous rage. Hackman was hanged at Tyburn, 
Boswell attending the funeral. Croft's supposed letters between Hackman 
and Martha Reaj', which made a great sensation when issued under the title of 
Love and Madnesfi, are now known to be spurious (see ch. x. p. 115). Martha 
Reay was buried in the chancel of Elstree Church, but Lord Sandwich, who, 
although he sent word to Hackman, who asked his forgiveness, that ' he had 
robbed him of all comfort in this world,' took no pains to erect a monument 
over her remains. On 28th February 1913 the present writer visited Elstree 



JOHN THURTELL 123 

In January 1824 John Thurtell was brought to 
trial at Hertford Assizes, and Hunt also. But first of 
all there were some interesting proceedings in the 
Court of King's Bench, before the Chief Justice and 
two other judges,^ complaining that Thurtell had not 
been allowed to see his counsel. And there were 
other points at issue. Thurtell's counsel moved for 
a criminal injunction against the proprietor of the 
Surrey Theatre in that a performance had been held 
there, and was being held, which assumed Thurtell's 
guilt, the identical horse and gig being exhibited in 
which Weare was supposed to have ridden to the scene 
of his death. Finally this was arranged, and a manda- 
mus was granted ' commanding the admission of legal 
advisers to the prisoner.' At last the trial came on at 
Hertford before Mr. Justice Park. It lasted two days, 
although the judge wished to go on all night in order 
to finish in one. But the protest of Thurtell, sup- 
ported by the jury, led to an adjournment. Probert 
had been set free and appeared as a witness. The 
jury gave a verdict of guilty, and Thurtell and Hunt 
were sentenced to be hanged, but Hunt escaped with 

iu the interest of this book. He found that the church of Martha Reay and 
William AVeare had long disappeared. A new structure dating from 1853 
had taken its place. The present vicar, he was told, has located the spot 
where Weare was buried, and it coincides with the old engravings. Martha 
Reay's remains, at the time of the rebuilding, were removed to the church- 
yard, and lie near the door of the vestry, lacking all memorial. The 
Artichoke Inn has also been rebuilt, and 'Weare's Pond,' which alone 
recalls the tragedy to-day, where the body was found, has contracted into a 
small pool. It is, however, clearly authentic, the brook, as pictured iu the 
old trial-books, now running under the road. 

* One of them was Mr. Justice Best, of whom it is recoi-ded that a 
certain index had the reference line, 'Mr. Justice Best: his Great Mind,' 
which seemed to have no justification in the mental qualities of that 
worthy, but was explained when one referred to the context and saw that 
' Mr. Justice Best said that he had a great mind to commit the witness for 
contempt.' 



124 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

transportation. Thurtell made his own speech for the 
defence, which had a great effect upon the jury, until 
the judge swept most of its sophistries away. It was, 
however, a very able performance. Thurtell's line of 
defence was to declare that Hunt and Probert were the 
murderers, and that he was a victim of their perjuries. 
If hanged, he would be hanged on circumstantial 
evidence only, and he gave, with great elaboration, the 
details of a number of cases where men had been 
wrongfully hanged upon circumstantial evidence. His 
lawyers had apparently provided him with books con- 
taining these examples from the past, and his month 
in prison was devoted to this defence, which showed 
great ability. The trial took place on 6th January 
1824, and Thurtell was hanged on the 9th, in front of 
Hertford Gaol : his body was given to the Anatomical 
Museum in London. A contemporary report says 
that Thurtell, on the scaffold, 

fixed his eyes on a young gentleman in the crowd, whom he had 
frequently seen as a spectator at the commencement of the pro- 
ceedings against him. Seeing that the individual was aflected by 
the circumstances, he removed them to another quarter, and in so 
doing recognised an individual well known in the sporting circles, 
to whom he made a slight bow. 

The reader of Lavengro might speculate whether that 
'young gentleman' was Borrow, but Borrow was in 
Norwich in January 1824, his father dying in the 
following month. In his Celebrated Trials Borrow 
tells the story of the execution with wonderful vividness, 
and supplies effective quotations from ' an eyewitness.' 
Borrow no doubt exaggerated his acquaintance with 
Thurtell, as in his Robinsoii Cr^usoe romance he was 
fully entitled to do for effect. He was too young at 
the time to have been much noticed by a man so much 



JOHN THURTELL 125 

his senior. The writer who accepts Borrows own 
statement that he really gave him ' some lessons in the 
noble art ' is too credulous,^ and the statement that 
Thurtell's house ' on the Ipswich Road was a favourite 
rendezvous for the Fancy ' is unsupported by evidence. 
Old Alderman Thurtell owned the house in question, 
and we find no evidence that he encouraged his son's 
predilection for prize-fighting. In The Romany Rye he 
gives his friend the jockey as his authority for the 
following apologia : 

The night before the day he was hanged at H , I harnessed 

a Suffolk Punch to my light gig, the same Punch which I had 
offered to him, which I have ever since kept, and which brought 
me and this short young man to Horncastle, and in eleven hours 
I drove that Punch one hundred and ten miles. I arrived at 

H just in the nick of time. There was the ugly jail — the 

scaffold — and there upon it stood the only friend I ever had in 
the world. Driving my Punch, which was all in a foam, into the 
midst of the crowd, which made way for me as if it knew what I 
came for, I stood up in my gig, took off my hat, and shouted, 
' God Almighty bless you, Jack ! ' The dying man turned his 
pale grim face towards me — for his face was always somewhat 
grim, do you see — nodded and said, or I thought I heard him say, 

' All right, old chap." The next moment my eyes water. 

He had a high heart, got into a scrape whilst in the marines, lost 
his half-pay, took to the turf, ring, gambling, and at last cut the 
throat of a villain who had robbed him of nearly all he had. But 
he had good qualities, and I know for certain that he never did 
half the bad things laid to his charge. 

^ See an introduction by Thomas Seccombe to Zauen^ro in 'Everyman's 
Library.* 



CHAPTER XII 



BORROW AND THE FANCY 



George Borrow had no sympathy with Thurtell the 
gambler. I can find no evidence in his career of any 
taste for games of hazard or indeed for games of any 
kind, although we recall that as a mere child he was 
able to barter a pack of cards for the Irish language. 
But he had certainly very considerable sympathy with 
the notorious criminal as a friend and patron of prize- 
fighting. This now discredited pastime Borrow ever 
counted a virtue. Was not his God-fearing father a 
champion in his way, or, at least, had he not in open 
fight beaten the champion of the moment, Big Ben 
Brain ? Moreover, who was there in those days with 
blood in his veins who did not count the cultivation of 
the Fancy as the noblest and most manly of pursuits ! 
Why, William Hazlitt, a prince among English essay- 
ists, whose writings are a beloved classic in our day, 
wrote in Jlie New Monthly Magazine in these very 
years ^ his own eloquent impression, and even introduces 
John Thurtell more than once as ' Tom Turtle,' little 
thinking then of the fate that was so soon to overtake 
him. What could be more lyrical than this : 

1 The New Monthly Magazine, February 1822, 'The Fight.' Reprinted 
among William Hazlitt's Fugitive Writings in vol. xii. of his Collected 
Works (Dent, 1904). 



BORROW AND THE FANCY 127 

Reader, have you ever seen a fight ? If not, you have a 
pleasure to come, at least if it is a fight like that between the 
Gas-man and Bill Neate. 

And then the best historian of prize-fighting, Henry 
Downes Miles, the author of Pugilistica, has his own 
statement of the case. You will find it in his mono- 
graph on John Jackson, the pugilist who taught Lord 
Byron to box, and received the immortality of an 
eulogistic footnote in Don Juan. Here is Miles's 
defence : 

No small portion of the public has taken it for granted that 
pugilism and blackguardism are synonymous. It is as an antidote 
to these slanderers that we pen a candid history of the boxers ; 
and taking the general habits of men of humble origin (elevated 
by their courage and bodily gifts to be the associates of those 
more fortunate in worldly position), we fearlessly maintain that 
the best of our boxers present as good samples of honesty, gener- 
osity of spirit, goodness of heart and humanity, as an equal 
number of men of any class of society. 

From Samuel Johnson to George Bernard Shaw 
literary England has had a kindness for the pugilist, 
although the magistrate has long, and rightly, ruled 
him out as impossible. Borrow carried his enthusiasm 
further than any, and no account of him that con- 
centrates attention upon his accomplishment as a dis- 
tributor of Bibles and ignores his delight in fisticuffs, 
has any grasp of the real George Borrow. Indeed it 
may be said, and will be shown in the course of our 
story, that Borrow entered upon Bible distribution in 
the spirit of a pugilist rather than that of an evangelist. 
But to return to Borrow's pugilistic experiences. He 
claims, as we have seen, occasionally to have put on 
the gloves with John Thurtell. He describes vividly 
enough his own conflicts with the Flaming Tinman 



128 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

and with Petulengro. His one heroine, Isopel Berners, 
had ' Fair Play and Long Melford ' as her ideal, ' Long 
Melford ' being the good right-handed blow with which 
Lavengro conquered the Tinman. Isopel, we re- 
member, had learned in Long Melford Union to ' Fear 
God and take your own part ! ' 

George Borrow, indeed, was at home with the whole 
army of prize-fighters, who came down to us like the 
Roman Caesars or the Kings of England in a note- 
worthy procession, their dynasty commencing with 
James Fig of Thame, who began to reign in 1719, and 
closing with Tom King, who beat Heenan in 1863, or 
with Jem Mace, who flourished in a measure until 
1872. With what zest must Borrow have followed 
the account of the greatest battle of all, that 
between Heenan and Tom Sayers at Farnborough 
in 1860, when it was said that Parliament had been 
emptied to patronise a prize-fight ; and this although 
Heenan complained that he had been chased out of 
eight counties. For by this time, in spite of lordly 
patronage, pugilism was doomed, and the more harm- 
less boxing had taken its place. ' Pity that corruption 
should have crept in amongst them,' sighed Lavengro 
in a memorable passage, in which he also has his pasan 
of praise for the bruisers of England : 

Let no one sneer at the bruisers of England — what were the 
gladiators of Rome, or the bull-fighters of Spain, in its palmiest 
days, compared to England's bruisers ? ^ 

^ Lavengro, ch. xxvi. 'It is as good as Homer,' says Mr. Augustine 
Birrell, quoting the whole passage in his Res Judicatce. Mr. Birrell tells a 
delightful story of an old Quaker lady Avho was heard to say at a dinner- 
table, when the subject of momentary conversation was a late prize-fight : 
' Oh, pity it was that ever corruption should have crept in amongst them ' — 
she had just been reading Lavengro. 





THE FAMILY OF JASPKR PKTULKNGRO 

' Jasper' or Ambrose Smith was a very old man when this picture was taken 

by Mr. Andrew Innes of Danhar in 1878. In both pictures we see Sanspirella, 

Jasper's wife, seated and holding a child. We are indebted to Mr. Charles 

Spence of Dunbar for these interesting groups. 



BORROW AND THE FANCY 129 

Yes : Borrow was never hard on the bruisers of 
England, and followed their achievements, it may be 
said, from his cradle to his grave. His beloved father 
had brought him up, so to speak, upon memories of one 
who was champion before George was born — Big Ben 
Brain of Bristol. Brain, although always called ' Big 
Ben,' was only 5 feet 10 in. high. He was for years a 
coal porter at a wharf off the Strand. It was in 1791 
that Ben Brain won the championship which placed 
him upon a pinnacle in the minds of all robust people. 
The Duke of Hamilton then backed him against the 
then champion, Tom Johnson, for five hundred guineas. 
' Public expectation,' says The Oracle, a contemporary 
newspaper, ' never was raised so high by any pugilistic 
contest ; great bets were laid, and it is estimated £20,000 
was wagered on this occasion.' Ben Brain was the 
undisputed conqueror, we are told, in eighteen rounds, 
occupying no more than twenty-one minutes.^ Brain 
died in 1794, and all the biographers tell of the piety of 
his end, so that Borrow's father may have read the 
Bible to him in his last moments, as Borrow avers,^ but 
I very much doubt the accuracy of the following : 

Honour to Brain, who four months after the event which I 
have now narrated was champion of England, having conquered 
the heroic Johnson. Honour to Brain, who, at the end of other 
four months, worn out by the dreadful blows which he had received 
in his manly combats, expired in the arms of my father, who read 
the Bible to him in his latter moments — Big Ben Brain. 

We have already shown that Brain lived for four years 
after his fight with Johnson. Perhaps the fight in 
Hyde Park between Borrow's father and Ben, as 
narrated in Lavengro, is all romancing. It makes 

^ Pugilistica, vol. i. 69. 2 Lavengro, ch. i. 



130 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

good reading in any case, as does Borrow's eulogy of 
some of his own contemporaries of the prize-ring : 

So the bruisers of England are come to be present at the grand 
fight speedily coming off; there they are met in the precincts of 
the old town, near the field of the chapel, planted with tender 
saplings at the restoration of sporting Charles, which are now 
become venerable elms as high as many a steeple. There they are 
met at a fitting rendezvous, where a retired coachman, with one 
leg, keeps an hotel and a bowling-green. I think I now see them 
upon the bowling-green, the men of renown, amidst hundreds of 
people with no renown at all, who gaze upon them with timid 
wonder. Fame, after all, is a glorious thing, though it lasts only 
for a day. There's Cribh, the champion of England, and perhaps 
the best man in England ; there he is, with his huge, massive 
figure, and face wonderfully like that of a lion. There is Belcher, 
the younger, not the mighty one, who is gone to his place, but 
the Teucer Belcher, the most scientific pugilist that ever entered 
a ring, only wanting strength to be, I won't say what. He appears 
to walk before me now, as he did that evening, with his white hat, 
white greatcoat, thin genteel figure, springy step, and keen, m 

determined eye. Crosses him, what a contrast ! grim, savage 
Shelton, who has a civil word for nobody, and a hard blow for 
anybody — hard ! one blow, given with the proper play of his 
athletic arm, will unsense a giant. Yonder individual, who strolls 
about with his hands behind him, supporting his brown coat 
lappets, under-sized, and who looks anything but what he is, is 
the king of the light weights, so called — Randall ! the terrible 
Randall, who has Irish blood in his veins — not the better for 
that, nor the worse ; and not far from him is his last antagonist, 
Ned Turner, who, though beaten by him, still thinks himself as 
good a man, in which he is, perhaps, right, for it was a near thing ; 
and ' a better shentleman,' in which he is quite right, for he is a 
Welshman. But how shall I name them all ? They were there 
by dozens, and all tremendous in their way. There was Bulldog 
Hudson, and fearless Scroggins, who beat the conqueror of Sam 
the Jew, There was Black Richmond — no, he was not there, but 
I knew him well ; he was the most dangerous of blacks, even with 
a broken thigh. There was Purcell, who could never conquer till 



BORROW AND THE FANCY 131 

all seemed over with him. There was — what ! shall I name thee 
last ? ay, why not ? I believe that thou art the last of all that 
strong family still above the sod, where mayest thou long continue 
— true piece of English stuff, Tom of Bedford — sharp as winter, 
kind as spring. 

All this is very accurate history. We know that there 
really was this wonderful gathering of the bruisers of 
England assembled in the neighbourhood of Norwich 
in July 1820, that is to say, sixteen miles away at 
North Walsham. More than 25,000 men, it is esti- 
mated, gathered to see Edward Painter of Norwich 
fight Tom Oliver of London for a purse of a hundred 
guineas. There were three Belchers, heroes of the 
prize-ring, but Borrow here refers to Tom, whose 
younger brother, Jem, had died in 1811 at the age 
of thirty. Tom Belcher died in 1854 at the age of 
seventy-one. Thomas Cribb was champion of England 
from 1805 to 1820. One of Cribb's greatest fights was 
with Jem Belcher in 1807, when, in the forty-first and 
last round, as we are told by the chroniclers, ' Cribb 
proving the stronger man put in two weak blows, 
when Belcher, quite exhausted, fell upon the ropes and 
gave up the combat.' Cribb had a prolonged career 
of glory, but he died in poverty in 1848. Happier was 
an earlier champion, John Gully, who held the glorious 
honour for three years — from 1805 to 1808. Gully 
turned tavern-keeper, and making a fortune out of 
sundry speculations, entered Parliament as member for 
Pontefract, and lived to be eighty years of age. 

It is necessary to dwell upon Borrow as the friend 
of prize-fighters, because no one understands Borrow 
who does not realise that his real interests were not in 
literature but in action. He would have liked to join 
the army but could not obtain a commission. And so 



132 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

he had to be content with such fighting as was possible. 
He cared more for the men who could use their fists 
than for those who could but wield the pen. He would, 
we may be sure, have rejoiced to know that many more 
have visited the tomb of Tom Sayers in Highgate 
Cemetery than have visited the tomb of George Eliot 
in the same burial-ground. A curious moral obliquity 
this, you may say. But to recognise it is to under- 
stand one side of Borrow, and an interesting side 
withal. 



CHAPTER XIII 

EIGHT YEARS OF VAGABONDAGE 

There has been much nonsense written concerning 
what has been called the * veiled period ' of George 
Borrow's life. This has arisen from a letter which 
Richard Ford of the Handbook for Travellers in Spain 
wrote to Borrow after a visit to him at Oulton in 1844. 
Borrow was full of his projected Lavengro, the idea of 
which he outlined to his friends. He was a genial man 
in those days, on the wave of a popular success. Was 
not The Bible in Spain passing merrily from edition to 
edition ! Borrow, it is clear, told Ford that he was 
writing liis 'Autobiography' — he had no misgiving 
then as to what he should call it — and he evidently 
proposed to end it in 1825 and not in 1833, when the 
Bible Society gave him his real chance in life. Ford 
begged him, in letters that came into Dr. Knapp's 
possession, and from which he quotes all too meagrely, 
not to ' drop a curtain ' over the eight years succeed- 
ing 1825. 'No doubt,' says Ford, 'it will excite a 
mysterious interest,' but then he adds in effect it will 
lead to a wrong construction being put upon the 
omission. Well, there can be but one interpretation, 
and that not an unnatural one. Borrow had a very 
rough time during these eight years. His vanity was 
hurt, and no wonder. It seems a small matter to us 

ISS 



134 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

now that Charles Dickens should have been ashamed 
of the blacking-bottle episode of his boyhood. Genius 
has a right to a penurious, and even to a sordid, boyhood. 
But genius has no right to a sordid manhood, and here 
was George ' Olaus ' Borrow, who was able to claim the 
friendship of William Taylor, the German scholar; 
who was able to boast of his association with sound 
scholastic foundations, with the High School at Edin- 
burgh and the Grammar School at Norwich ; who was 
a great linguist and had made rare translations from 
the poetry of many nations, starving in the byways of 
England and of France. What a fate for such a man that 
he should have been so unhappy for eight years; should 
have led the most penurious of roving lives, and almost 
certainly have been in prison as a common tramp. ^ It 
was all very well to romance about a poverty-stricken 
youth. But when youth had fled there ceased to be 
romance, and only sordidness was forthcoming. From 
his twenty-third to his thirty-first year George Borrow 
was engaged in a hopeless quest for the means of 
making a living. There is, however, very little mystery. 
Many incidents of each of these years are revealed at 
one or other point. His home, to which he returned 
from time to time, was with his mother at the cottage 
in Willow Lane, Norwich. Whether he made sufficient 
profit out of a horse, as in The Romany Rye, to enable 
him to travel upon the proceeds, as Dr. Knapp thinks, 
we cannot say. Dr. Knapp is doubtless right in 
assuming that during this period he led * a life of 
roving adventure,' his own authorised version of his 
career at the time, as we have quoted from the bio- 
graphy in his handwriting from Men of the Time. But 

' Only thus can we explain Borrow's later declaration that he had four 
times been in prison. 



EIGHT YEARS OF VAGABONDAGE 135 

how far this roving was confined to England, how far 
it extended to other lands, we do not know. We are, 
however, satisfied that he starved through it all, that 
he rarely had a penny in his pocket. At a later date 
he gave it to be understood at times that he had visited 
the East, and that India had revealed her glories to 
him. We do not believe it. Defoe was Borrow's 
master in literature, and he shared Defoe's right to lie 
magnificently on occasion. Dr. Knapp has collected 
the various occasions upon which Borrow referred to his 
supposed earlier travels abroad prior to his visit to St. 
Petersburg in 1833. The only quotation that carries 
conviction is an extract from a letter to his mother from 
St. Petersburg, where he writes of ' London, Paris, 
Madrid, and other capitals which I have visited.' I am 
not, however, disinclined to accept Dr. Knapp's theory 
that in 1826-7 Borrow did travel to Paris and through 
certain parts of Southern Europe. It is strange, all the 
same, that adventures which, had they taken place, 
would have provoked a thousand observations, pro- 
voked but two or three passing references. Yet there 
is no getting over that letter to his mother, nor that 
reference in The Gypsies of Spain, where he says — 
' Once in the south of France, when I was weary, 
hungry, and penniless . . .' Borrow certainly did 
some travel in these years, but it was sordid, lacking in 
all dignity — never afterwards to be recalled. For the 
most part, however, he was in England. We know that 
Borrow was in Norwich in 1826, for we have seen him 
superintending the publication of the Romantic Ballads 
by subscription in that year. In that year also he 
wrote the letter to Haydon, the painter, to say that 
he was ready to sit for him, but that he was 'going 
to the south of France in a little better than a 



136 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

fortnight.'^ We know also that he was in Norwich in 
1827, because it was then, and not in 1818 as described 
in Lavengro, that he ' doffed his hat ' to the famous trot- 
ting stalhon Marshland Shales, when that famous old 
horse was exhibited at Tombland Fair on the Castle Hill. 
We meet him next as the friend of Dr. Bowring. The 
letters to Bowring we must leave to another chapter, 
but they commence in 1829 and continue through 1830 
and 1831. Through them all Borrow shows himself alive 
to the necessity of obtaining an appointment of some 
kind, and meanwhile he is hard at work upon his trans- 
lations from various languages, which, in conjunction 
with Dr. Bowring, he is to issue as Songs of Scandi- 
navia. Dr. Knapp thinks that in 1829 he made the 
translation of the Memoirs of Fidocq, which appeared 
in that year with a short preface by the translator." 
But these little volumes bear no internal evidence of 
Borrows style, and there is no external evidence to 
support the assumption that he had a hand in their 
publication. His occasional references to Vidocq are 
probably due to the fact that he had read this little 
book. 

I have before me one very lengthy manuscript of 
Borrow's of this period. It is dated December 1829, 

* I quote this letter in another chapter. Mr. Herbert Jenkins thinks 
{Life, ch. V. p. 88) that Borrow was in Paris during the revolution of 1830, 
because of a picturesque reference to the war correspondents there in The 
Bible in Spain. But Borrow never hesitated to weave little touches of 
romance from extraneous writers into his narratives^ and may have done so 
here. I have visited most of the principal capitals of the world, he says in 
The Bible in Spain. This we would call a palpable lie were not so much of 
The Bible in Spain sheer invention. 

'■^ Memoirs of Vidocq, Principal Agent of the French Police until 1827, and 
now proprietor of the paper manufactory at St. Mande. Written by himself. 
Translated from the French. In Four Volumes. London : Whittaker, 
Treacher and Arnot, Ave Maria Lane, 1829. 



EIGHT YEARS OF VAGABONDAGE 137 

and is addressed, * To the Committee of the Honour- 
able and Praiseworthy Association, known by the 
name of the Highland Society.' ^ It is a proposal that 
they should publish in two thick octavo volumes a 
series of translations of the best and most approved 
poetry of the ancient and modern Scots- Gaelic bards. 
Borrow was willing to give two years to the project, for 
which he pleads ' with no sordid motive. ' It is a 
dignified letter, which will be found in one of Dr. 
Knapp's appendices — so presumably Borrow made two 
copies of it. The offer was in any case declined, and 
so Borrow passed from disappointment to disappoint- 
ment during these eight years, which no wonder he 
desired, in the coming years of fame and prosperity, to 
veil as much as possible. The lean years in the lives 
of any of us are not those upon which we delight to 
dwell, or upon which we most cheerfully look back.^ 

^ This with other documents I am about to present to the Borrow Museum, 
Norwich. 

2 In 1830 Borrow had another disappointment. He translated The Sleep- 
ing Bard from the Welsh. This also failed to find a publisher. It was 
issued in 1860^ under which date we discuss it. 



CHAPTER XIV 

SIR JOHN BOWRING 

' Poor George. ... I wish he were making money. 
He works hard and remains poor ' — thus wrote John 
Borrow to his mother in 1830 from Mexico, and it dis- 
poses in a measure of any suggestion of mystery with 
regard to five of those years that he wished to veil. 
They were not spent, it is clear, in rambling in the East, 
as he tried to persuade Colonel Napier many years later. 
They were spent for the most part in diligent attempt 
at the capture of words, in reading the poetry and the 
prose of many lands, and in making translations of 
unequal merit from these diverse tongues. This is in- 
disputably brought home to me by the manuscripts in 
my possession, supplemented by those that fell to Dr. 
Knapp. These manuscripts represent years of work. 
Borrow has been counted a considerable linguist, and 
he had assuredly a reading and speaking acquaintance 
with a great many languages. But this knowledge 
was acquired, as all knowledge is, with infinite trouble 
and patience. I have before me hundreds of small sheets 
of paper upon which are written English words and 
their equivalents in some twenty or thirty languages. 
These serve to show that Borrow learnt a language as 
a small boy in an old-fashioned system of education 
learns his Latin or French — by writing down simple 
words — ' father,' * mother,' * horse,' * dog,' and so on with 

188 



SIR JOHN BOWRING 139 

the same word in Latin or French in front of them. 
Of course Borrow had a superb memory and abundant 
enthusiasm, and so he was enabled to add one language 
to another and to make his translations from such books 
as he could obtain, with varied success. I believe that 
nearly all the books that he handled came from the 
Norwich library, and when Mrs. Borrow wrote to her 
elder son to say that George was working hard, as we 
may fairly assume, from the reply quoted, that she did, 
she was recalling this laborious work at translation that 
must have gone on for years. We have seen the first 
fruit in the translation from the German — or possibly 
from the French — of Klinger's Faustus ; we have seen 
it in Romantic Ballads from the Danish, the Irish, and 
the Swedish. Now there really seemed a chance of a 
more prosperous utilisation of his gift, for Borrow had 
found a zealous friend who was prepared to go forward 
with him in this work of giving to the English public 
translations from the literatures of the northern nations. 
This friend was Dr. John Bowring, who made a very 
substantial reputation in his day. 

Bowring has told his own story in a volume of Auto- 
biogi^aphical Recollections,^ a singularly dull book for a 
man whose career was at once so varied and so full of 
interest. He was born at Exeter in 1792 of an old 
Devonshire family, and entered a merchant's office in 
his native city on leaving school. He early acquired 
a taste for the study of languages, and learnt French 
from a refugee priest precisely in the way in which 
Borrow had done. He also acquired Italian, Spanish, 
German and Dutch, continuing with a great variety 
of other languages. Indeed, only the very year after 

^ Autobiographical Recollections of Sir John Bowring. With a Brief Memoir 
by Lewin B, Bowring. Henry S. King and Co., London, 1877. 



140 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Borrow had published Faustus, he published his 
Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain, and the year 
after Borrow's Romantic Ballads came Bowring s Servian 
Popular Poetry. With such interest in common it was 
natural that the two men should be brought together, 
but Bowring had the qualities which enabled him to 
make a career for himself and Borrow had not. In 
1811, as a clerk in a London mercantile house, he was 
sent to Spain, and after this his travels were varied. He 
was in Russia in 1820, and in 1822 was arrested at 
Calais and thrown into prison, being suspected by the 
Bourbon Government of abetting the French Liberals. 
Canning as Foreign Minister took up his cause, and 
he was speedily released. He assisted Jeremy Bentham 
in founding Tke Westminster Revieiv in 1824. Mean- 
while he was seeking official employment, and in con- 
junction with Mr. Villiers, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, 
and that ambassador to Spain who befriended Borrow 
when he was in the Peninsula, became a commissioner 
to investigate the commercial relations between England 
and France. After the Reform Bill of 1832 Bowring 
was frequently a candidate for Parliament, and was 
finally elected for Bolton in 1841. In the meantime he 
assisted Cobden in the formation of the Anti-Corn 
Law League in 1838. Having suffered great monetary 
losses in the interval, he applied for the appointment of 
Consul at Canton, of which place he afterwards became 
Governor, being knighted in 1854. At one period of 
his career at Hong Kong his conduct was made the sub- 
ject of a vote of censure in Parliament, Lord Palmerston, 
however, warmly defending him. Finally returning to 
England in 1862, he continued his literary work with 
unfailing zest. He died at Exeter, in a house very near 
that in which he was born, in 1872. His extraordinary 



SIR JOHN BOWRING 141 

energies cannot be too much praised, and there is no 
doubt but that in addition to being the possessor of great 
learning he was a man of high character. His Hterary 
efforts were surprisingly varied. There are at least 
thirty-six volumes with his name on the title-page, 
most of them unreadable to-day ; even such works, for 
example, as his Visit to the Philippine Isles and Siam and 
the Siamese, which involved travel into then little-known 
lands. Perhaps the only book by him that to-day com- 
mands attention is his translation of Chamisso's Pete?' 
Schlemihl. The most readable of many books by him 
into which I have dipped is his Servian Popular Poetry 
of 1827, in which we find interesting stories in verse 
that remind us of similar stories from the Danish in 
Borrow's Romantic Ballads published only the year 
before. The extraordinary thing, indeed, is the many 
points of likeness between Borrow and Bowring. Both 
were remarkable linguists ; both had spent some time in 
Spain and Russia ; both had found themselves in foreign 
prisons. They were alike associated in some measure 
with Norwich — Bowring through friendship with Taylor 
— and I might go on to many other points of likeness 
or of contrast. It is natural, therefore, that the penniless 
Borrow should have welcomed acquaintance with the 
more prosperous scholar. Thus it is that, some thirty 
years later, Borrow described the introduction by Taylor: 

The writer had just entered into his eighteenth year, when he met 
at the table of a certain Anglo-Germanist an individual, apparently 
somewhat under thirty, of middle stature, a thin and weaselly 
figure, a sallow complexion, a certain obliquity of vision, and a 
large pair of spectacles. This person, who had lately come from 
abroad, and had published a volume of translations, had attracted 
some slight notice in the literary world, and was looked upon as a 
kind of lion in a small provincial capital. After dinner he argued 



142 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

a great deal, spoke vehemently against the Church, and uttered the 
most desperate Radicalism that was perhaps ever heard, saying, he 
hoped that in a short time there would not be a king or queen in 
Europe, and inveighing bitterly against the English aristocracy, 
and against the Duke of Wellington in particular, whom he said, 
if he himself was ever president of an English republic — an event 
which he seemed to think by no means improbable — he would hang 
for certain infamous acts of profligacy and bloodshed which he had 
perpetrated in Spain. Being informed that the writer was some- 
thing of a philologist, to which character the individual in question 
laid great pretensions, he came and sat down by him, and talked 
about languages and literature. The writer, who was only a boy, 
was a little frightened at first.^ 

The quarrels of authors are frequently amusing but 
rarely edifying, and this hatred of Bowring that 
possessed the soul of poor Borrow in his later years is 
of the same texture as the rest. We shall never know 
the facts, but the position is comprehensible enough. 
Let us turn to the extant correspondence" which, as 
far as we know, opened when Borrow paid what was 
probably his third visit to London in 1829 : 

To Dr. John Bowring 

17 Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, [Dec. 6, 1829.] 

My dear Sir, — Lest I should intrude upon you when you are 

busy, I write to inquire when you will be unoccupied. I wish to 

shew you my translation of The Death of Balder, Ewald's most 

celebrated production,^ which, if you approve of, you will perhaps 

' The Romany Rye Appendix, ch. xi. 

^ Kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. Wilfred J. Bowring-, Sir John 
Bowring's grandson. The rights which I hold through the executors of 
George Borrow's stepdaughter, Mrs. MacOubry, over the Borrow correspond- 
ence enable me to publish in their completeness letters which three previous 
biographers, all of whom have handled the correspondence, have published 
mainly in fragments. 

^ The manuscript of The Death of Balder came into the hands of Mr. 
William Jarrold of Norwich through Mr. Webber of Ipswich, who purchased 



SIR JOHN BOWRING 143 

render me some assistance in bringing forth, for I don't know many 
publishers. I think this will be a proper time to introduce it to 
the British public, as your account of Danish literature will doubt- 
less cause a sensation. My friend Mr, R. Taylor has my Koempe 
Viser, which he has read and approves of ; but he is so very deeply 
occupied, tiiat I am apprehensive he neglects them : but I am 
unwilling to take them out of his hands, lest I offend him. Your 
letting me know when I may call will greatly oblige, — Dear Sir, 
your most obedient servant, George Borrow. 



To Dr. John Bowring 

17 Great Russell Street^ Bloomsbuby. [Bee. 28, 1829.]^ 
My dear Sir, — I trouble you with these lines for the purpose 
of submitting a little project of mine for your approbation. 
When I had last the pleasure of being at yours, you mentioned, 
that Ave might at some future period unite our strength in 
composing a kind of Danish Anthology. You know, as well as I, 
that by far the most remarkable portion of Danish poetry is 
comprised in those ancient popular productions termed Kcempe 
Viser, which I have translated. Suppose we bring forward at 
once the first volume of the Danish Anthology, which should 
contain the heroic and supernatural songs of the K. V., which are 
certainly the most interesting ; they are quite ready for the press 
with the necessary notes, and with an introduction which I am 
not ashamed of. The second volume might consist of the Historic 
songs and the ballads and Romances, this and the third volume, 
which should consist of the modern Danish poetry, and should 
commence with the celebrated ' Ode to the Birds ' by Morten Borup, 
might appear in company at the beginning of next season. To 
Olenslager should be allotted the principal part of the fourth 
volume ; and it is my opinion that amongst his minor pieces 
should be given a good translation of his Aladdin, by which alone 

a large mass of Borrov/ inauuscripts that were sold at Borrow's death, most 
of which were re-purchased by Dr. Knapp. His firm^ Jarrold and Sons, issued 
The Death of Balder, from the Danish of Johannes Ewald, in 1889. 

^ This and the previous letter are undated, but bear the careful endorse- 
ment of Dr. John Bowring-, as he then was, with the date of receipt, presum- 
ably the day after the letters were written. 



144 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

he has rendered his claim to the title of a great poet indubitable. 
A proper Danish Anthology cannot be contained in less than 4 
volumes, the literature being so copious. The first volume, as I 
said before, might appear instanter, with no further trouble to 
yourself than writing, if you should think fit, a page or two of 
introductory matter. — Yours most truly, my dear Sir, 

George Borrow. 



To Dr. John Bo wring 

17 Great Russell Street, Deer. 31, 1829. 
My dear Sir, — I received your note, and as it appears that 
you will not be disengaged till next Friday evening (this day week) 
I will call then. You think that no more than two volumes can 
be ventured on. Well ! be it so ! The first volume can contain 
70 choice Kcernpe Viser ; viz. all the heroic, all the supernatural 
ballads (which two classes are by far the most interesting), and a 
few of the historic and romantic songs. The sooner the work is 
advertised the better ,yor / am terribly afraid of heing forestalled in 
the Kirmpe Viser hy some of tliose Scotch blackguards who affect to 
translate from all languages, of which they are fully as ignorant 
as Lockhart is of Spanish. I am quite ready with the first volume, 
which might appear by the middle of February (the best time in 
the whole season), and if we unite our strength in the second, I 
think we can produce something worthy of fame, for we shall have 
plenty of matter to employ talent upon. — Most truly yours, 

George Borrow. 

To Dr. John Bowring 

17 Great Russell Street, Bloomsbuky, Jany. 14, 1830. 
My dear Sir, — I approve of the prospectus in every respect ; 
it is business-like, and there is nothing flashy in it. I do not wish 
to suggest one alteration. I am not idle : I translated yesterday 
from your volume 3 longish Kcernpe Visers, among which is the 
' Death of King Hacon at Kirkwall in Orkney,' after his unsuccessful 
invasion of Scotland. To-day I translated ' The Duke's Daughter 
of Skage,' a noble ballad of 400 lines. When I call again I 
will, with your permission, retake Tullin and attack The Surveyor. 



SIR JOHN BOWRING 145 

Allow me, my dear Sir, to direct your attention to Olensch Jaeger's 
St. Hems Aftenspil, which is the last in his Digte of 1803. It 
contains his best lyrics, one or two of which I have translated. It 
might, I think, be contained within 70 pages, and I could translate 
it in 3 weeks. Were we to give the whole of it we should gratify 
Olenschlaeger's wish expressed to you, that one of his larger pieces 
should appear. But it is for you to decide entirely on what is or 
what is 7iot to be done. When you see theJ'oreig7i editor I should 
feel much obliged if you would speak to him about my reviewing 
Tegner, and enquire whether a good article on Welsh poetry 
would be received. I have the advantage of not being a Welsh- 
man. I would speak the truth, and would give translations of 
some of the best Welsh poetry ; and I really believe that my 
translations would not be the worst that have been made from th 
Welsh tongue. — Most truly yours, G. Borrow. 

To Dr. John Bowring 

17 Great Russell Street, Bloomsburv, Jany. 7, 1830. 
My dear Sir, — I send the prospectus ' for your inspection and 
for the correction of your master hand. I have endeavoured to 
assume a Danish style, I know not whether I have been successful. 

1 'PROSPECTUS 

It is proposed to publish, in Two Volumes Octavo 
Price to Subscribers £1, Is., to Non-Subscribers £l, 4s. 

THE SONGS OF SCANDINAVIA 

Translated by 

Dr. Bowring and Mr. Borrow. 

Dedicated to the King of Denmark, by permission of His Majesty. 



The First Volume will contain about One Hundred Specimens of the 
Ancient Popular Ballads of North-Western Europe, arranged under the 
heads of Heroic, Supernatural, Historical, and Domestic Poems. 

The Second Volume will represent the Modern School of Danish Poetry, 
from the time of Tullin, giving the most remarkable lyrical productions of 
Ewald, Olenschleeger, Baggesen, Ingemann, and many others.' 

This four-page leaflet contains two blank pages for lists of subscribers, 
who apparently did not come, and the project seems to have been abandoned. 

K 



146 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Alter, I pray you, whatever false logic has crept into it, find a 
remedy for its incoherencies, and render it fit for its intended 
purpose. I have had for the two last days a rising headache 
which has almost prevented me doing anything. I sat down this 
morning and translated a hundred lines of the May-day ; it is a 
fine piece. — Yours most truly, my dear Sir, George Borrow. 

To Dr. John Bo wring 

7 Museum Street, Jany. 1830. 
My dear Sir, — I write this to inform you that I am at No. 7 
Museum St., Bloomsbury. I have been obliged to decamp from 
Russell St. for the cogent reason of an execution having been sent 
into the house, and I thought myself happy in escaping with my 
things. I have got half of the Manuscript from Mr. Richard 
Taylor, but many of the pages must be rewritten owing to their 
being torn, etc. He is printing the prospectus, but a proof has 
not yet been struck off. Send me some as soon as you get them.^ 
I will send one with a letter to H. G. — Yours eternally, 

G. Borrow. 

To Dr. John Bo wring 

7 Museum Street, Jany, 25, 18.30. 
My dear Sir, — I find that you called at mine, I am sorry that 
I was not at home. I have been to Richard Taylor, and you will 
have the prospectuses this afternoon. I have translated Ferroe's 
'Worthiness of Virtue' for you, and the two other pieces I 
shall translate this evening, and you shall have them all when I 
come on Wednesday evening. If I can at all assist you in any- 
thing, pray let me know, and I shall be proud to do it. — Yours 
most truly, G. Borrow. 

To Dr. John Bowring 

7 Museum Street, Fehy. 20, 1830. 
My dear Sir, — To my great pleasure I perceive that the books 
have all arrived safe. But I find that, instead of an Icelandic 

^ The prospectus, already quoted, bears the imprint : Printed by Ricliard 
Taylor, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. 



SIR JOHN BOWRING 147 

Grammar, you have lent me an Essay on the origm of the Icelandic 
Language, wliich I here return. Thorlakson's Grave-ode is super- 
latively fine, and I translated it this morning, as I breakfasted. 
I have just finished a translation of Baggesen's beautiful poem, 
and 1 send it for your inspection. — Most sincerely yours, 

George Bokrow. 

P.S. — When I come we will make the modifications of this 
piece, if you think any are requisite, for I have various readings 
in my mind for every stanza. I wish you a very pleasant journey 
to Cambridge, and hope you will procure some names amongst the 
literati. 

To Dr. John Bowring 

7 Museum Street, March 9, 1830. 
My dear Sir, — I have thought over the Museum matter which 
we were talking about last night, and it appears to me that it 
would be the very thing for me, provided that it could be accom- 
plished. I should feel obliged if you would deliberate upon the 
best mode of proceeding, so that when I see you again I may have 
the benefit of your advice. — Yours most sincerely, 

George Borrow. 

To this letter Bowring replied the same day, and 
his reply is preserv^ed by Dr. Knapp. He promised to 
help in the Museum project ' by every sort of counsel 
and creation.' ' I should rejoice to see you nicked in 
the British Museum,' he concludes. 

To Dr. John Bowring 

7 Museum Street, Friday Evening, May 21, 1830. 
My dear Sir, — I shall be happy to accept your invitation 
to meet Mr. Grundtvig to-morrow morning. As at present no 
doubt seems to be entertained of Prince Leopold's accepting the 
sovereignty of Greece, would you have any objection to write to 
him concerning me ? I should be very happy to go to Greece in 
his service. I do not wish to go in a civil or domestic capacity. 



148 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

and I have, moreover, no doubt that all such situations have been 
long since filled up ; I wish to go in a military one, for which I 
am qualified by birth and early habits. You might inform the 
Prince that I have been for years on the Commander-in-Chiers 
List for a commission, but that I have not had sufficient interest 
to procure an appointment. One of my reasons for wishing to 
reside in Greece is, that the mines of Eastern Literature would 
be acceptable to me. I should soon become an adept in Turkish, 
and would weave and transmit to you such an anthology as would 
gladden your very heart. As for The Songs of Scandinavia, all 
the ballads would be ready before departure, and as I should take 
books, I would in a few months send you translations of the 
modern lyric poetry. I hope this letter will not displease you. 
I do not write it from fightiness, but from thoughtfulness. I am 
uneasy to find myself at four and twenty drifting on the sea of 
the world, and likely to continue so. — Yours most sincerely, 

G. Borrow. 

This letter is printed in part by Dr. Knapp, and 
almost in its entirety by Mr. Herbert Jenkins. Dr. 
Knapp has much sound worldly reflection upon its 
pathetic reference to ' drifting on the sea of the world.' 
If only, he suggests, Borrow had not received that 
unwise eulogy from Allan Cunningham about his ' ex- 
quisite Danish ballads,' if only he had listened to 
Richard Ford's advice — which came too late in any case 
— ' Avoid poetry and translations of poets ' — how much 
better it would have been. But Borrow had not the 
makings in him of a 'successful' man, and we who 
enjoy his writings to-day must be contented with the 
reflection that he had just the kind of life-experience 
which gave us what he had to give. Here Borrow 
holds his place among the poets — an unhappy race. 
In any case the British Museum appointment was not 
for him, nor the military career. Had one or other 
fallen to his lot, we might have had much literary work 



SIR JOHN BOWRING 149 

of a kind, but certainly not Lavengro. To return to 
the correspondence : 

To Dr. John Bowring 

7 Museum St., June 1, 1830. 
My dear Sir, — I send you Hafhur and Sigiie to deposit in the 
Scandinavian Treasury, and I should feel obliged by your doing 
the following things. 

1. Hunting up and lending me your Anglo-Saxon Dictionary 
as soon as possible, for Grundtvig wishes me to assist him in 
the translation of some Anglo-Saxon Proverbs. 

2. When you write to Finn Magnussen to thank him for his 
attention, pray request him to send the Feeroislca Quida, or popular 
songs of Ferroe, and also Broder Rims Historie, or the History of 
Friar Rtish, the book which Thiele mentions in his FolTiesagn. — 
Yours most sincerely, G. Borrow. 

To Dr. John Bowring 

7 MusKi'M Street, June 7, 1830. 
My dear Sir, — I have looked over Mr. Grundtvig's manuscripts. 
It is a very long affair, and the language is Norman-Saxon. ^40 
would not be an extravagant price for a transcript, and so they told 
him at the museum. However, as I am doing nothing particular 
at present, and as I might learn something from transcribing it, I 
would do it for<£'20. He will call on you to-morrow morning, and 
then if you please you may recommend me. The character closely 
resembles the ancient Irish, so I think you can answer for my 
competency. — Yours most truly, G. Borrow. 

F.S. — Do not lose the original copies of the Danish translations 
which you sent to the Foreign Quarterly^ for I have no duplicates. 
I think The Roses of Ingemann was sent ; it is not printed ; so if 
it be not returned, we shall have to re-translate it. 

To Dr. John Bowring 

7 Museum St., Sept. 14, 1830. 
My dear Sir, — I return you the Bohemian books. I am going 
to Norwich for some short time as I am very unwell, and hope 



150 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

that cold bathing in October and November may prove of service 
to me. My complaints are, I believe, the offspring of ennui and 
unsettled prospects. I have thoughts of attempting to get into 
the French service, as I should like prodigiously to serve under 
Clausel in the next Bedouin campaign. I shall leave London 
next Sunday and will call some evening to take my leave ; I 
cannot come in the morning, as early rising kills me. — Most 
sincerely yours, G. Boruow. 



To Dr. John Bowring 

Willow Lane, Norwich, Sept. 11, 1831. 
My dear Sir, — I return you my most sincere thanks for your 
kind letter of the 2nd inst.,and though you have not been success- 
ful in your application to the Belgian authorities in my behalf, I 
know full well that you did your utmost, and am only sorry that 
at my instigation you attempted an impossibility. The Belgians 
seem either not to know or not to care for the opinion of the 
great Cyrus, who gives this advice to his captains : 'Take no heed 
from what countries ye fill up your ranks, but seek recruits as ye do 
horses, not those particularly who are of your own country, but 
those of merit.' The Belgians will only have such recruits as are 
born in Belgium, and when we consider the heroic manner in which 
the native Belgian army defended the person of their new sove- 
reign in the last conflict with the Dutch, can we blame them for 
their determination ? It is rather singular, however, that, resolved 
as they are to be served only by themselves, they should have sent 
for 50,000 Frenchmen to clear their country of a handful of 
Hollanders, who have generally been considered the most unwar- 
like people in Europe, but who, if they had had fair play given 
them, would long ere this time have replanted the Orange flag on 
the towers of Brussels, and made the Belgians what they deserve 
to be — hewers of wood and drawers of water. And now, my dear 
Sir, allow me to reply to a very important part of your letter. 
You ask me whether I wish to purchase a commission in the 
British Service, because in that case you would speak to the 
Secretary at War about me. I must inform you, therefore, that 
my name has been for several years upon the list for the purchase 



SIR JOHN BOWRING 151 

of a commission, and I have never yet had sufficient interest to 
procure an appointment. If I can do nothing better I shall be 
very glad to purchase ; but I will pause two or three months 
before I call upon you to fulfil your kind promise. It is believed 
that the militias will be embodied in order to be sent to that 
unhappy country Ireland, and, provided I can obtain a commission 
in one of them and they are kept in service, it would be better 
than spending o£?500 upon one in the line. I am acquainted with 
the colonels of the two Norfolk regiments, and I dare say that 
neither of them would have any objection to receive me. If they 
are not embodied I will most certainly apply to you, and you 
may say when you recommend me that, being well grounded in 
Arabic, and having some talent for languages, I might be an 
acquisition to a corps in one of our Eastern colonies. I flatter 
myself that I could do a great deal in the East provided I could 
once get there, either in a civil or military capacity. There is much 
talk at present about translating European books into the two 
great languages, the Arabic and Persian. Now I believe that 
with my enthusiasm for those tongues I could, if resident in the 
East, become in a year or two better acquainted with them than 
any European has been yet, and more capable of executing such a 
task. Bear this in mind, and if, before you hear from me again, 
you should have any opportunity to recommend me as a proper 
person to fill any civil situation in those countries, or to attend 
any expedition thither, I pray you to lay hold of it, and no 
conduct of mine shall ever give you reason to repent of it. — I 
remain, my dear Sir, your most obliged and obedient servant, 

George Borrow. 

P.S. — Present my best remembrances to Mrs. Bowring and to 
Edgar, and tell them that they will both be starved. There is now 
a report in the street that twelve corn-stacks are blazing within 
twenty miles of this place. I have lately been wandering about 
Norfolk, and I am sorry to say that the minds of the peasantry are 
in a horrible state of excitement. I have repeatedly heard men 
and women in the harvest-field swear that not a grain of the corn 
they were cutting should be eaten, and that they would as lieve 
be hanged as live. I am afraid all this will end in a famine and a 
rustic war. 



152 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Borrow 's next letter to Bowring that has been pre- 
served is dated 1835 and was written from Portugal. 
With that I will deal when we come to Borrow's 
travels in the Peninsula. Here it sufficeth to note 
that during the years of Borrow's most urgent need he 
seems to have found a kind friend if not a very zealous 
helper in the ' Old Radical ' whom he came to hate so 
cordially. 



CHAPTER XV 

BORROW AND THE BIBLE SOCIETY 

That George Borrow should have become an agent 
for the Bible Society, then in the third decade of its 
flourishing career, has naturally excited doubts as to 
his moral honesty. The position was truly a contrast 
to an earlier ideal contained in the letter to his Norwich 
friend, Roger Kerrison, that we have already given, in 
which, with all the zest of a Shelley, he declares that he 
intends to live in London, 'write plays, poetry, etc., 
abuse religion, and get myself prosecuted.' But that 
was in 1824, and Borrow had suffered great tribulation 
in the intervening eight years. He had acquired many 
languages, wandered far and written much, all too little 
of which had found a publisher. There was plenty of 
time for his religious outlook to have changed in the 
interval, and in any case Borrow was no theologian. 
The negative outlook of ' Godless Billy Taylor,' and 
the positive outlook of certain Evangelical friends with 
whom he was now on visiting terms, were of small 
account compared with the imperative need of making 
a living — and then there was the passionate longing of 
his nature for a wider sphere — for travelling activity 
which should not be dependent alone upon the vaga- 
bond's crust. What matter if, as Harriet Martineau 
— most generous and also most malicious of women, 
with much kinship with Borrow in temperament — said, 

163 



154 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

that his appearance before the public as a devout agent 
of the Bible Society excited a ' burst of laughter from 
all who remembered the old Norwich days ' ; what 
matter if another ' scribbling woman,' as Carlyle called 
such strident female writers as were in vogue in mid- 
Victorian days — Frances Power Cobbe — thought him 
* insincere ' ; these were unable to comprehend the 
abnormal heart of Borrow, so entirely at one with 
Goethe in Wilhelm Meisters JFandeyjahre : 

Bleibe nicht am Boden het'ten, 
Frisch gewagt und frisch hinaus ! 
Kopf und Arm, mit heitern Kraften, 
Ueberall sind sie zu Haus ; 
Wo wir uns der Sonne freuen, 
Sind wir jede Serge los ; 
Dass wir uns in ihr zerstreuen, 
Darum ist die W^elt so gross. ^ 

Here was Borrow's opportunity indeed. Verily I 
believe that it would have been the same had it been 
a society for the propagation of the writings of Defoe 
among the Persians. With what zest would Borrow 
have undertaken to translate 3IoIl Flandei^s and 
Captain Singleton into the languages of Hafiz and 
Omar ! But the Bible Society was ready to his hand, 
and Borrow did nothing by halves. A good hater and 
a staunch friend, he was loyal to the Bible Society 
in no half-hearted way, and not the most pronounced 

* Keep not standiiif^, fixed aud rooted, 
Briskly venture, briskly roam : 
Head and hand, where'er thou foot it, 

And stout heart, are still at home. 
In each land the sun does visit : 

We are gay whate'er betide. 
To give room for wandering is it. 
That the world was made so wide. 

— Carlyle'g translation. 



BORROW AND THE BIBLE SOCIETY 155 

quarrel with forces obviously quite out of tune with 
his nature led to any real slackening of that loyalty. In 
the end a portion of his property went to swell the 
Bible Society's funds.^ 

When Borrow became one of its servants, the Bible 
Society was only in its third decade. It was founded 
in the year 1804, and had the names of William 
Wilberforce, Granville Sharp, and Zachary Macaulay 
on its first committee. To circulate the authorised 
version of the Bible without note or comment was the 
first ideal that these worthy men set before them ; 
never to the entire satisfaction of the great printing 
organisations, which already had a considerable financial 
interest in such a circulation. For long years the 
words * Sold under cost price ' upon the Bibles of the 
Society excited mingled feelings among those interested 
in the book trade." The Society's first idea was limited 
to Bibles in the English tongue. This was speedily 
modified. A Bible Society was set up in Nuremberg 
to which money was granted by the parent organisa- 
tion. A Bible in the Welsh language was circulated 
broadcast through the Principality, and so the move- 
ment grew. From the first it had one of its principal 
centres in Norwich, where Joseph John Gurney's 
house was open to its committee, and at its annual 
gatherings at Earl ham his sister Elizabeth Fry took a 
leading part, while Wilberforce, Charles Simeon, the 
famous preacher, and Legh Richmond, whose Dairy- 
man s Daughter Borrow failed to appreciate, were of 

1 Through the will of his stepdaughter^ Henrietta MacOubrey. 

- Although the Bible Society theu as now purchased all the sheets of its 
Bibles from the three authorised sources of production — the King's printers 
who hold a patent^ and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which hold 
licences to print — these exclusive privileges being granted in order that the 
text of the Bible should be maintained with accuracy. 



156 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

the company. ' Uncles Buxton and Cunningham are 
here,' we find one of Joseph John Gurney's daughters 
writing in describing a Bible Society gathering. This 
was John Cunningham, rector of Harrow, and it was 
his brother who helped Borrow to his position in 
connection with the Society, as we shall see. At 
the moment of these early meetings Borrow is but 
a boy, meeting Joseph Gurney on the banks of the 
river near Earlham, and listening to his discourse 
upon anghng. The work of the Bible Society in 
Russia may be said to have commenced when one 
John Paterson of Glasgow, who had been a missionary 
of the Congregational body, went to St. Petersburg 
during those critical months of 1812 that Napoleon 
was marching into Russia. Paterson indeed, William 
Canton tells us,^ was ' one of the last to behold the 
old Tartar wall and high brick towers' and other 
splendours of the Moscow which in a month or 
two were to be consumed by the flames. Paterson 
was back again in St. Petersburg before the French 
were at the gates of Moscow, and it is noteworthy that 
while Moscow was burning and the Czar was on his 
way to join his army, this remarkable Scot was sub- 
mitting to Prince Galitzin a plan for a Bible Society in 
St. Petersburg, and a memorial to the Czar thereon : 

The plan and memorial were examined by the Czar on the 
18th (of December) ; with a stroke of his pen he gave his sanction 
— 'So be it, Alexander"*; and as he wrote, the last tattered 



^ Let me here acknowledge with gratitude my indebtedness to that fine 
work The History of the British and Foreign Bible Society (1904-10^ Murray), by 
William Canton, which is worthy of the accomplished author oi The Invisible 
Playmate. An earlier history of the Society, by the Rev. George Browne, 
published in 1869, has necessarily been superseded by Mr. Canton's book. 



BORROW AND THE BIBLE SOCIETY 157 

remnants of the Grand Army struggled across the ice of the 

Niemeu.^ 

The Society was formed in January 1813, and when 
the Czar returned to St. Petersburg in 1815, after the 
shattering of Napoleon's power, he authorised a new 
translation of the Bible into modern Russian. From 
Russia it was not a far cry, where the spirit of 
evangelisation held sway, to Manchuria and to China. 
To these remote lands the Bible Society desired to 
send its literature. In 1822 the gospel of St. Matthew 
was printed in St. Petersburg in Manchu. Ten years 
later the type of the wliole New Testament in that 
language was lying in the Russian capital. ' All that 
was required was a Manchu scholar to see the work 
through the press.' ^ Here came the chance for Borrow. 
At this period there resided at Oulton Hall, Suffolk, 
but a few miles from Norwich, a family of the name 
of Skepper, Edward and Anne his wife, with their 
two children, Breame and Mary. Mary married in 
1817 one Henry Clarke, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. 
He died a few months afterwards of consumption. Of 
this marriage there was a posthumous child, Henrietta 
INIary, born but two months after her father's death. 
Mary Clarke, as she now was, threw herself with zest 
into all the religious enthusiasms of the locality, and 
the Rev. Francis Cunningham, Vicar of St. INIargaret's, 
Lowestoft, v/as one of her friends. Borrow had met 
Mary Clarke on one of his visits to Lowestoft, and she 
had doubtless been impressed with his fine presence, to 
say nothing of the intelligence and varied learning of 
the young man. The following note, the first com- 

1 Canton's History of the Bible Society, vol. i. 195. 
^ Ibid., vol. ii. 127. 



158 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

munication I can find from Borrow to his future wife, 
indicates how matters stood at the time : 

To Mrs. Clarke 

St. Giles, Norwich, 22 October 1832. 
Dear Madam, — According to promise I transmit you a piece 
of Oriental writing, namely the tale of Blue Beard, translated 
into Turkish by myself. I wish it were in my power to send you 
something more worthy of your acceptance, but I hope you will 
not disdain the gift, insignificant though it be. Desiring to be 
kindly remembered to Mr. and Mrs. Skepper and the remainder 
of the family, — I remain, dear Madam, your most obedient humble 
servant, George Borrow. 

That Borrow owed his introduction to Mr. Cunning- 
ham to Mrs. Clarke is clear, although Cunningham, in 
his letter to the Bible Society urging the claims of 
Borrow, refers to the fact that a ' young farmer ' in the 
neighbourhood had introduced him. This was probably 
her brother, Breame Skepper. Dr. Knapp was of the 
opinion that Joseph John Gurney obtained Borrow his 
appointment, but the recently published correspond- 
ence of Borrow with the Bible Society makes it clear 
that Cunningham wrote — on 27th December 1832 — 
recommending Borrow to the secretary, the Rev. 
Andrew Brandram. How little he knew of Borrow is 
indicated by the fact that he referred to him as ' inde- 
pendent in circumstances.' Brandram told Caroline 
Fox many years afterwards that Gurney had effected 
the introduction, but this was merely a lapse of 
memory. In fact we find Borrow asking to be allowed 
to meet Gurney before his departure. In any case he 
has himself told us, in one of the brief biographies of 
himself that he wrote, that he promptly walked to 
London, covering the whole distance of 112 miles 



BORROW AND THE BIBLE SOCIETY 159 

in twenty-seven hours, and that his expenses amounted 
to 5jd. laid out in a pint of ale, a half-pint of milk, 
a roll of bread, and two apples. He reached London 
in the early morning, called at the offices of the Bible 
Society in Earl Street, and was kindly received by 
Andrew Brandram and Joseph Jowett, the two secre- 
taries. He was asked if he would care to learn 
Manchu, and go to St. Petersburg. He was given six 
months for the task, and doubtless also some money on 
account. He returned to Norwich more luxuriously — 
by mail coach. In June 1833 we find a letter from 
Borrow to Jowett, dated from Willow Lane, Norwich, 
and commencing, ' I have mastered Manchu, and I 
should feel obliged by your informing the committee 
of the fact, and also my excellent friend, JNIr. Brand- 
ram.' A long reply to this by Jowett is among my 
Borrow Papers, but the Bible Society clearly kept 
copies of its letters, and a portion of this one has been 
printed.^ It shows that Borrow went through much 
heart-burning before his destiny was finally settled. 
At last he was again invited to London, and found 
himself as one of two candidates for the privilege of 
going to Russia. The examination consisted of a 
Manchu hymn, of which Borrow's version seems to 
have proved the more acceptable, and he afterwards 
printed it in his Targuin. Finally, on the 5th of July 
1833, Borrow received a letter from Jowett offering 
him the appointment, with a salary of £200 a year 
and expenses. The letter contained his first lesson in 
the then unaccustomed discipline of the Evangelical 
vocabulary. Borrow had spoken of the prospect of 
becoming * useful to the Deity, to man, and to himself.' 

^ In Letters from George Borrow to the Bible Society (Hodder and Stough- 
ton), 1911. 



160 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

' Doubtless you meant,' commented Jowett, ' the pro- 
spect of glorifying God,' and Jowett frankly tells him 
that his tone of confidence in speaking of himself ' had 
alarmed some of the excellent members of our com- 
mittee.' Borrow adapted himself at once, and is con- 
gratulated by Jowett in a later communication upon 
the ' truly Christian ' spirit of his next letter. 

By an interesting coincidence there was living in 
Norwich at the moment when Borrow was about to 
leave it, a man who had long identified himself with 
good causes in Russia, and had lived in that country 
for a considerable period of his life. John Venning^ 
was born in Totnes in 1776, and he is buried in the 
Rosary Cemetery at Norwich, where he died in 1858, 
after twenty-eight years' residence in that city. He 
started for St. Petersburg four years after John Howard 
had died, ostensibly on behalf of the commercial house 
with which he was associated, but with the intention of 
carrying on the work of that great man in prison re- 
form. Alexander i. was on the throne, and he made 
Venning his friend, frequently conversing with him 
upon religious subjects. He became the treasurer of a 
society for the humanising of Russian prisons ; but 
when Nicholas became Czar in 1825 Venning's work 
became more difficult, although the Emperor was sym- 
pathetic. Venning returned to England in 1830, and 
thus opportunely, in 1833, was able to give his fellow- 
townsman letters of introduction to Prince Galitzin 
and other Russian notables, so that Borrow w^as able to 
set forth under the happiest auspices — with an entire 

1 See Memoirs of John Venning , Esq. , formerly of St. Petemburgh and late of 
Norwich. With Numerous Notices from his Manuscripts relative to the Imperial 
Family of Russia. By ThuliaS. Henderson. London : Knight and Son, 1862. 
Borrow's name is not once mentioned, but there is a slight reference to him 
on pages 148 and 149. 



BORROW AND THE BIBLE SOCIETY 161 

change of conditions from those eight years of semi- 
starvation that he was now to leave behind him for ever. 
Borrow left London for St. Petersburg on 31st July 
1833, not forgetting to pay his mother before he 
left the £17 he had had to borrow during his time of 
stress. Always devoted to his mother, Borrow sent her 
sums of money at intervals from the moment the 
power of earning came to him. We shall never know, 
we can only surmise something of the self-sacrificing 
devotion of that mother during the years in which 
Borrow had failed to find remunerative work. 
Wherever he wandered there had always been a home 
in the Willow Lane cottage. It is probable that 
much the greater part of the period of his eight 
years of penury was spent under her roof. Yet we 
may be sure that the good mother never once 
reproached her son. She had just that touch of 
idealism in her character that made for faith and 
hope. In any case never more was Borrow to suffer 
penury, or to be a burden on his mother. Henceforth 
she was to be his devoted care to her dying day. 



CHAPTER XVI 

ST. PETERSBURG AND JOHN P. HASFELD 

Borrow travelled by way of Hamburg and Liibeck to 
Travemiinde, whence he went by sea to St. Petersburg, 
where he arrived on the twentieth of August 1833. He 
was back in London in September 1835, and thus it 
will be seen that he spent two years in Russia. After 
the hard life he had led, everything was now rose- 
coloured. ' Petersburg is the finest city in the world,' 
he wrote to Mr. Jowett ; ' neither London nor Paris nor 
any other European capital which I have visited has 
sufficient pretensions to enter into comparison with it 
in respect to beauty and grandeur.' But the striking 
thing about Borrow in these early years was his capacity 
for making friends. He had not been a week in St. 
Petersburg before he had gained the regard of one, 
William Glen, who, in 1825, had been engaged bj^ the 
Bible Society to translate the Old Testament into 
Persian. The clever Scot, of whom Borrow was in- 
formed by a competent judge that he was ' a Persian 
scholar of the first water,' was probably too heretical for 
the Society which recalled him, much to his chagrin. 
' He is a very learned man, but of very simple and 
unassuming manners,' wrote Borrow to Jowett.^ His 

* Darlow's George Sorrow's Letters to the Bible Society, page 76. There 
are twenty letters written by Borrow from Russia to the Bible Society, con- 
tained in T. H. Darlow's Letters of George Borrow to the British and Foreign 

162 



ST. PETERSBURG AND J. P. HASFELD 163 

version of the Psalms appeared in 1830, and of Pi^o- 
verbs in 1831. Thus he was going home in despair, 
but seems to have had good talk on the way with 
Borrow in St. Petersburg. In 1845 his complete Old 
Testament in Persian appeared in Edinburgh. This 
William Glen has been confused with another WilHam 
Glen, a law student, who taught Carlyle Greek, but 
they had nothing in common. Borrow and Carlyle 
could not possibly have had friends in common. 
Borrow was drawn towards this William Glen by his 
enthusiasm for the Persian language. But Glen de- 
parted out of his life very quickly. Hasfeld, who 
entered it about the same time, was to stay longer. 
Hasfeld was a Dane, now thirty-three years of age, 
who, after a period in the Foreign Office at Copen- 
hagen, had come to St. Petersburg as an interpreter 
to the Danish Legation, but made quite a good income 
as a professor of European languages in cadet schools 
and elsewhere. The English language and literature 
would seem to have been his favourite topic. His 
friendship for Borrow was a great factor in Borrow's 
life in Russia and elsewhere. If Borrow's letters to 
Hasfeld should ever turn up, they will prove the best 
that he wrote. Hasfeld's letters to Borrow were 
preserved by him. Three of them are in my possession. 
Others were secured by Dr. Knapp, who made far too 
little use of them. They are all written in Danish on 

Bible Society, several of whichj in the original manuscripts^ are in my 
possession. There are as many also in Kuapp's Life of Borrow, and these 
last are far more interesting, being addressed to his mother and other 
friends. I have several other letters concerned with Borrow's Bible Society 
work in Russia, but they are not inspiring. Borrow's correspondence with 
Hasfeld, of which Knapp gives us glimpses, is more bracing, and the two 
or three letters from that admirable Dane that are in my collection I am 
glad to print here. 



164 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

foreign notepaper : flowery, grandiloquent productions 
we may admit, but if we may judge a man by his 
correspondents, we have a revelation of a more human 
Borrow than the correspondence with the friends at 
Earl Street reveals : 

St. Petersburg, 6/18 November 1836. 
My dear Friend, — Much water has run through the Neva 
since I last wrote to you, my last letter was dated 5/17th April ; 
the last letter I received from you was dated Madrid, 23rd May, 
and I now see with regret that it is still unanswered ; it is, 
however, a good thing that I have not written as often to you 
as I have thought about you, for otherwise you would have 
received a couple of letters daily, because the sun never sets with- 
out you, my lean friend, entering into my imagination. I received 
the Spanish letter a day or two before I left for Stockholm, and it 
made the journey with me, for it was in my mind to send you 
an epistle from Svea's capital, but there were so many petty 
hindrances that I was nearly forgetting myself, let alone corre- 
spondence. I lived in Stockholm as if each day were to be my 
last, swam in champagne, or rested in girls' embraces. You 
doubtless blush for me ; you may do so, but don't think that 
that conviction will murder my almost shameless candour, 
the only virtue which I possess, in a superfluous degree. In 
Sweden I tried to be lovable, and succeeded, to the astonish- 
ment of myself and everybody else. I reaped the reward on the 
most beautiful lips, which only too often had to complain that the 
fascinating Dane was faithless like the foam of the sea and the ice 
of spring. Every wrinkle which seriousness had impressed on 
my face vanished in joy and smiles; my frozen heart melted and 
pulsed with the rapid beat of gladness; in short, I was not recog- 
nisable. Now I have come back to my old wrinkles, and make 
sacrifice again on the altar of friendship, and when the incense, 
this letter, reaches you, then prove to me your pleasure, wherever 
you may be, and let an echo of friendship's voice resound from 
Granada's Alhambra or Sahara's deserts. But I know that you, 
good soul, will write and give me great pleasure by informing me 
that you are happy and well ; when I get a letter from you my 
heart rejoices, and I feel as if I were happy, and that is what 



ST. PETERSBURG AND J. P. HASFELD 165 

happiness consists of. Therefore, let your soldierlike letters march 
promptly to their place of arms — paper — and move in close 
columns to St. Petersburg, where they will find warm winter 
quarters. I have received a letter from my correspondent in 
London, Mr. Edward Thomas Allan, No. 11 North Audley St. ; 
he informs me that my manuscript has been promenading about, 
calling on publishers without having been well received ; some of 
them would not even look at it, because it smelt of Russian 
leather ; others kept it for three or six weeks and sent it back 
with ' Thanks for the loan,' They probably used it to get rid of 
the moth out of their old clothes. It first went to Longman and 
Co.'s, Paternoster Row ; Bull of Hollis St. ; Saunders and Otley, 
Conduit St. ; John Murray of Albemarle St., who kept it for 
three weeks ; and finally it went to Bentley of New Burlington 
St., who kept it for SIX weeks and returned it; now it is to pay 
a visit to a Mr. Colburn, and if he won't have the abandoned 
child, I will myself care for it. If this finds you in London, 
which is quite possible, see whether you can do anything for me 
in this matter. Thank God, I shall not buy bread with the 
shillings I perhaps may get for a work which has cost me seventy 
nights, for I cannot work during the day. In The Athenaum^^ 

' In the Atheyicei/m for March 5, 1836, there is a short, interesting letter, 
dated from St. Petersburg, signed J. P. H. This was obviously written by 
Hasfeld. ' Here your journal is found in every well furnished library,' he 
writes, ' and yet not a passing word do you ever bestow upon us,' and then, 
to the extent of nearly five columns, he discourses upon the present state of 
Russian literature, and has very much to say about his friend George Borrow: 

'Will it be thought ultra-barbarian if I mention that Mr. George 
Borrow concluded, in the autumn, the publication of the New Testament in 
the Mandchou language? Remember, if you please, that he was sent here 
for the express purpose by the British and Foreign Bible Society of London. 
The translation was made for the Society by Mr. Lipoftsof, a gentleman in 
the service of the Russian Department of Foreign Affairs, who has spent the 
greater part of an industrious life in Peking and the East. I can only say 
that it is a beautiful edition of an Oriental work, that it is printed with great 
care on a fine imitation of Chinese paper made on purpose. At the outset, 
Mr. Borrow spent weeks and months in the printing-office to make the com- 
positors acquainted with the intricate Mandchou types, and that, as for the 
contents, I am assured by well-informed persons, that this translation is 
remarkable for the correctness and fidelity with which it has been executed.' 

Then Hasfeld goes on to describe Borrow's small volume, Targum : 



166 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

No. 436, issued on the 3rd March this year, you will find an 
article which I wrote, and in which you are referred to ; in the 
same paper you will also find an extract from my translation. I 
hope that article will meet with your approbation. Ivan Semione- 
witch sends his kind regards to you. I dare not write any more, for 
then I should make the letter a double one, and it may perhaps 
go after you to the continent ; if it reaches you in England, write 
AT ONCE to your sincere friend, J. P. Hasfeld. 

My address is, Stieglitz and Co., St. Petersburg. 

St. Petersburg, dth/2Ut July 1842. 
Dear Friend, — I do not know how I shall begin, for you 
have been a long time without any news from me, and the fault 
is mine, for the last letter was from you ; as a matter of fact, I 
did produce a long letter for you last year in September, but you 
did not get it, because it was too long to send by post and I had 
no other opportunity, so that, as I am almost tired of the letter, 
you shall, nevertheless, get it one day, for perhaps you will find 
something interesting in it ; I cannot do so, for I never like to 
read over my own letters. Six days ago I commenced my old 
hermit life; my sisters left on the 3rd/15th July, and are now, 
with God's help, in Denmark. They left with the French steamer 
Amsterdam, and had two Russian ladies with them, who are to 
spend a few months with us and visit the sea watering-places. 
These ladies are the Misses Koladkin, and have learnt English 
from me, and became my sisters'' friends as soon as they could 
understand each other. My sisters have also made such good 
progress in your language that they would be able to arouse your 
astonishment. They read and understand everything in English, 
and thank you very much for the pleasure you gave them with 
your '. Targum "" ; they know how to appreciate ' King Christian 
stood by the high mast,' and everything which you have trans- 

' The exquisite delicacy with which he has caught and rendered the beauties 
of his well-choseu originals,' he says, 'is a proof of his learning and genius. 
The work is a pearl in literature, and, like pearls, it derives value from 
its scarcity, for the whole edition was limited to about a hundred copies.' 
Then Hasfeld gives two poems from the book, which really justify his eulogy, 
for the poetic quality of Targum has not had justice done to it by Borrow's 
later critics. 



ST. PETERSBURG AND J. P. HASFELD 167 

lated of languages with which they are acquainted. They have 
not liad more than sixty real lessons in English. After they had 
taken ten lessons, I began, to their great despair, to speak 
English, and only gave them a Danish translation when it was 
absolutely necessary. The result was that they became so accus- 
tomed to English that it scarcely ever occurs to them to speak 
Danish together; when one cannot get away from me one must 
learn from me. The brothers and sisters remaining behind are 
now also to go to school when they get home, for they have 
recognised how pleasant it is to speak a language which servants 
and those around one do not understand. During all the winter 
my dearest thought was how, this summer, I was going to visit my 
long, good friend, who was previously lean and who is now fat, and 
how I should let him fatten me a little, so as to be able to with- 
stand better the long winter in Russia ; I would then in the 
autumn, like the bears, go into my winter lair fat and sleek, and 
of all these romantic thoughts none has materialised, but I have 
always had the joy of thinking them and of continuing them ; I 
can feel that I smile when such ideas run through my mind. I 
am convinced that if I had nothing else to do than to employ my 
mind with pleasant thoughts, I should become fat on thoughts 
alone. The principal reason why this real pleasure journey had 
to be postponed, was that my eldest sister, Hanna, became ill 
about Easter, and it was not until the end of June that she was 
well enough to travel. I will not speak about the confusion 
which a sick lady can cause in a bachelor's house, occasionally I 
almost lost my patience. For the amount of roubles which that 
illness cost I could very well have travelled to America and back 
again to St. Petersburg; I have, however, the consolation in my 
reasonable trouble that the money which the doctor and chemist 
have received was well spent. The lady got about again after she 
had caused me and Augusta just as much pain, if not more, than 
she herself suffered. Perhaps you know how amiable people are 
when they suffer from liver trouble ; I hope you may never get it. 
I am not anxious to have it either, for you may do what the devil 
you like for such persons, and even then they are not satisfied. 
We have had great festivals here by reason of the Emperor's 
marriage; I did not move a step to see the pageantry ; moreover, 
it is difficult to find anything fresh in it which would afford me 



168 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

enjoyment ; I have seen illuminations and fireworks, the only 
attractive thing there was must have been the King of Prussia ; 
but as I do not know that good man, I have not very great 
interest in him either ; nor, so I am told, did he ask for me, and 
he went away without troubling himself in the slightest about 
me ; it was a good thing that I did not bother him. J. P. H. 

St. Petersburg, 2Gth April/8th May 1868. 
Dear Friend, — I thank you for your friendly letter of the 
12th April, and also for the invitation to visit you. I am thinking 
of leaving Russia soon, perhaps permanently, for twenty-seven 
years are enough of this climate. It is as yet undecided when I 
leave, for it depends on business matters which must be settled, 
but I hope it will be soon. What I shall do I do not yet know 
either, but I shall have enough to live on ; perhaps I shall settle 
down in Denmark. It is very probable that I shall come to 
London in the summer, and then I shall soon be at Yarmouth 
with you, my old true friend. It was a good thing that you at 
last wrote, for it would have been too bad to extend your dis- 
inclination to write letters even to me. The last period one 
stays in a country is strange, and I have many persons whom 
I have to separate from. If you want anything done in Russia, 
let me know promptly ; when I am in movement I will write, 
so that you may know where I am, and what has become of 
me. I have been ill nearly all the winter, but now feel daily 
better, and when I get on the water I shall soon be well. We 
have already had hot and thundery weather, but it has now 
become cool again, I have already sold the greater part of 
my furniture, and am living in furnished apartments which cost 
me seventy roubles per month ; I shall soon be tired of that. 
I am expecting a letter from Denmark which will settle matters, 
and then I can get ready and spread my wings to get out into the 
world, for this is not the world, but Russia. I see you have 
changed houses, for last year you lived at No. 37. With kindest 
regards to your dear ones, I am, dear friend, yours sincerely, 

John P. Hasfeld.'^ 

1 The name is frequently spelt ' Hasfeldt,' but I have followed the spelling 
not only of Hasfeld's signature in his letters in my possession, but also of 
the printed addressed envelope which he was in the habit of forwarding to 
his friends in his letters. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE MANCHU BIBLE-TARGUM—THE TALISMAN 

The Bible Society wanted the Bible to be set up in 
the Manchu language, the official language of the 
Chinese Court and Government. A Russian scholar 
named Lipoftsof, who had spent twenty years in 
China, undertook in 1821 to translate the New 
Testament into Manchu for £560. Lipoftsof had 
done his work in 1826, and had sent two manuscript 
copies to London. In 1832 the Rev. William Swan 
of the London Missionary Society in passing through 
St. Petersburg discovered a transcript of a large 
part of the Old and New Testament in Manchu, 
made by one Pierot, a French Jesuit, many years 
before. This transcript was unavailable, but a second 
was soon afterwards forthcoming for free publication 
if a qualified Manchu scholar could be found to see it 
through the Press. Mr. Swan's communication of these 
facts to the Bible Society in London gave Borrow his 
opportunity. It was his task to find the printers, buy 
the paper, and hire the qualified compositors for setting 
the type. It must be admitted Borrow worked hard 
for his £200 a year. First he had to ask the diplo- 
matists for permission from the Russian Government, 
not now so friendly to British Missionary zeal. The 
Russian Bible Society had been suppressed in 1826. 
He succeeded here. Then he had to continue his 

169 



170 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

studies in the Manchu language. He had written from 
Norwich to Mr. Jowett on 9th June 1833, ' I have 
mastered Manchu,' but on 20th January 1834 we find 
him writing to the same correspondent : ' I pay about 
six shillings, English, for each lesson, which I grudge 
not, for the perfect acquirement of Manchu is one of 
my most ardent wishes.'^ Then he found the printers 
— a German firm, Schultz and Beneze — who probably 
printed the two little books of Borrow's own for him as 
a * make weight.' He purchased paper for his Manchu 
translation with an ability that would have done credit 
to a modern newspaper manager. Every detail of these 
transactions is given in his letters to the Bible Society, 
and one cannot but be amused at Borrow's explana- 
tion to the Reverend Secretary of the little subter- 
fuges by which he proposed to * best ' the godless for 
the benefit of the godly : 

Knowing but too well that it is the general opinion of the 
people of this country that Englishmen are made of gold, and 
that it is only necessary to ask the most extravagant price for any 
article in order to obtain it, I told no person, to whom I applied, 
who I was, or of what country ; and I believe I was supposed to 
be a German.^ 

Then came the composing or setting up of the type of 
the book. When Borrow was called to account by his 
London employers, who were not sure whether he was 
wasting time, he replied : ' I have been working in the 
printing-office, as a common compositor, between ten 
and thirteen hours every day.' In another letter 
Borrow records further difficulties with the printers 
after the composition had been effected. Several of 

^ Darlow, Letters to the Bible Society, p. 32. 
2 Ibid. p. 47. 



THE MANCHU BIBLE 171 

the working printers, it appears, 'went away in disgust' 
Then he adds : 

I was resolved 'to do or die,' and, instead of distressing and 
perplexing the Committee with complaints, to write nothing until 
I could write something perfectly satisfactory, as I now can ; and 
to bring about that result I have spared neither myself nor my own 
money. I have toiled in a close printing-office the whole day, 
during ninety degrees of heat, for the purpose of setting an 
example, and have bribed people to work whom nothing but 
bribes would induce so to do. I am obliged to say all this in self- 
justification. No member of the Bible Society would ever have 
heard a syllable respecting what I have undergone but for the 
question, ' What has Mr. Borrow been about ? ' ^ 

It is not my intention to add materially to the letters 
of Borrow from Russia and from Spain that have 
already been published, although many are in my 
possession. They reveal an aspect of the life of Borrow 
that has been amply dealt with by other biographers, 
and it is an aspect that interests me but little. Here, 
however, is one hitherto unpublished letter that throws 
much light upon Borrow's work at this time : 

To the Rev. Andrew Brandram 

St. Petersburg, 18th Oct. 1833. 
Reverend Sir, — Supposing that you will not be displeased to 
hear how I am proceeding, I have taken the liberty to send a few 
lines by a friend ^ who is leaving Russia for England. Since my 
arrival in Petersburg I have been occupied eight hours every 
day in transcribing a Manchu manuscript of the Old Testament 
belonging to Baron Schilling, and I am happy to be able to say 
that I have just completed the last of it, the Rev. Mr. Swan, the 
Scottish missionary, having before my arrival copied the previous 

* Darlow, Letters to the Bible Society, pp. 60j 61. 
2 Mr. Glen. 



172 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

part. Mr. Swan departs to his mission in Siberia in about two 
months, during most part of which time I shall be engaged in 
collating our transcripts with the original. It is a great blessing 
that the Bible Society has now prepared the whole of the Sacred 
Scriptures in Manchu, which will doubtless, when printed, prove 
of incalculable benefit to tens of millions who have hitherto been 
ignorant of the will of God, putting their trust in idols of wood 
and stone instead of in a crucified Saviour. I am sorry to say that 
this country in respect to religion is in a state almost as lament- 
able as the darkest regions of the East, and the blame of this 
rests entirely upon the Greek hierarchy, who discountenance all 
attempts to the spiritual improvement of the people, who, poor 
things, are exceedingly willing to receive instruction, and, notwith- 
standing the scantiness of their means in general for the most part, 
eagerly buy the tracts which a few pious English Christians cause 
to be printed and hawked in the neighbourhood. But no one is 
better aware, Sir, than yourself that without the Scriptures men can 
never be brought to a true sense of their fallen and miserable state, 
and of the proper means to be employed to free themselves from 
the thraldom of Satan. The last few copies which remained of 
the New Testament in Russian were purchased and distributed a 
few days ago, and it is lamentable to be compelled to state that 
at the present there appears no probability of another edition 
being permitted in the modern language. It is true that there 
are near twenty thousand copies of the Sclavonic bible in the shop 
which is entrusted with the sale of the books of the late Russian 
Bible Society, but the Sclavonian translation is upwards of a 
thousand years old, having been made in the eighth century, and 
differs from the dialect spoken at present in Russia as much as 
the old Saxon does from the modern English. Therefore it 
cannot be of the slightest utility to any but the learned, that is, 
to about ten individuals in one thousand. I hope and trust that 
the Almighty will see fit to open some door for the illumination 
of this country, for it is not to be wondered if vice and crime be 
very prevalent here when the people are ignorant of the com- 
mandments of God. Is it to be wondered that the people follow 
their every day pursuits on the Sabbath when they know not the 
unlawfulness of so doing .'' Is it to be wondered that they steal 
when only in dread of the laws of the country, and are not deterred 



THE MANCHU BIBLE 173 

by the voice of conscience which only exists in a few. This 
accounts for their profanation of their Sabbath, their proneness to 
theft, etc. It is only surprising that so much goodness is to be 
found in their nature as is the case, for they are mild, polite, and 
obliging, and in most of their faces is an expression of great kind- 
ness and benignity. I find that the slight knowledge which I 
possess of the Russian tongue is of the utmost service to me here, 
for the common opinion in England that only French and German 
are spoken by persons of any respectability in Petersburg is a 
great and injurious error. The nobility, it is true, for the most 
part speak French when necessity obliges them, that is, when in 
company with foreigners who are ignorant of Russian, but the 
affairs of most people who arrive in Petersburg do not lie among 
the nobility, therefore a knowledge of the language of the country, 
unless you associate solely with your own countrymen, is indis- 
pensable. The servants speak no language but their native 
tongue, and also nine out of ten of the middle classes of Russians. 
I might as well address Mr. Lipdftsof, who is to be my coadjutor 
in the edition of the New Testament (in Manchu) in Hebrew as in 
either French or German, for though he can read the first a little 
he cannot speak a word of it or understand when spoken. I will 
now conclude by wishing you all possible happiness. I have the 
honour to be, etc., George Borkow. 

When the work was done at so great a cost of 
money ,^ and of energy and enthusiasm on the part of 
George Borrow, it was found that the books were useless. 
Most of these New Testaments were afterwards sent out 
to China, and copies distributed by the missionaries 
there as opportunities offered. It was found, however, 
that the Manchus in China were able to read Chinese, 
preferring it to their own language, which indeed had 
become almost confined to official use.^ In the year 

1 The Manchu version— i.e. the transcript of Pierot's MS. of the Old 
Testament and 1000 copies of Lipoffzof's translation of the New — cost the 
Society in all £2600. Canton : History of the Bible Society, vol. ii. p. 239. 

^ DarloM' : Letters to the Bible Society, p. 96. 



174 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

1859 editions of St. Matthew and St. Mark were 
published in Manchu and Chinese side by side, 
the Manchu text being a reprint of that edited by 
Borrow, and these books are still in use in Chinese 
Turkestan. But Borrow had here to suffer one of the 
many disappointments of his life. If not actually 
a gypsy he had all a gypsy's love of wandering. No 
impartial reader of the innumerable letters of this 
period can possibly claim that there was in Borrow any of 
the proselytising zeal or evangelical fervour which wins 
for the names of Henry Martyn and of David Livingstone 
so much honour and sympathy even among the least 
zealous. At the best Borrow's zeal for religion was 
of the order of Dr. Keate, the famous headmaster of 
Eton — ' Blessed are the pure in heart ... if you are not 
pure in heart, by God, I '11 flog you ! ' Borrow had got 
his New Testaments printed, and he wanted to distri- 
bute them because he wished to see still more of the 
world, and had no lack of courage to carry out any 
well defined scheme of the organisation which was em- 
ploying him. Borrow had thrown out constant hints 
in his letters home. People had suggested to him, he 
said, that he was printing Testaments for which he would 
never find readers. If you wish for readers, they had 
said to him, ' you must seek them among the natives of 
Pekin and the fierce hordes of desert Tartary.' And it 
was this last most courageous thing that Borrow pro- 
posed. Let him, he said to Mr. Jowett, fix his head- 
quarters at Kiachta upon the northern frontier of China. 
The Society should have an agent there : 

I am a person of few words, and will therefore state without 
circumlocution that I am willing to become that agent. I speak 
Russ, Manchu, and the Tartar or broken Turkish of the Russian 
steppes, and have also some knowledge of Chinese, which I might 



THE MANCHU BIBLE 175 

easily improve at Kiachta, half of the inhabitants of which town 
are Chinamen. I am therefore not altogether unqualified for such 
an adventure.^ 

The Bible Committee considered this and other plans 
through the intervening months, and it seems clear that 
at the end they would have sanctioned some form of 
missionary work for Borrow in the Chinese Empire ; 
but on 1st June 1835 he wrote to say that the Russian 
Government, solicitous of maintaining good relations 
with China, would not grant him a passport across Siberia 
except on the condition that he carried not one single 
Manchu Bible thither.'^ And so Borrow's dreams were 
left unfulfilled. He was never to see China or the 
farther East, although, because he was a dreamer and 
like his hero, Defoe, a bit of a liar, he often said he had. 
In September 1835 he was back in England awaiting in 
his mother's home in Norwich further commissions from 
his friends of the Bible Society. 

Work on the Manchu New Testament did not en- 
tirely absorb Borrow's activities in St. Petersburg. He 
seems to have made a proposition to another organisa- 
tion, as the following letter indicates. The proposal 
does not appear to have borne any fruit : 

Prayer Book and Homily Society, 
No. 4 Exeter Hall, London, January IQth, 1835. 
Sir, — Your letters dated July and November 17, 1834, 
and addressed to the Rev. F. Cunningham, have been laid 
before the Committee of the Prayer Book and Homily Society, 
who have agreed to print the translation of the first three Homilies 
into the Russian language at St. Petersburg, under the direction 
of Mr. and Mrs. Biller, so soon as they shall have caused the trans- 

* Darlow ; Letters to the Bible Society, p. 66. ' Ibid., p. 81. 



176 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

lation to undergo a thorough revision, and shall have certified the 
same to this Society. I write by this post to Mrs. Biller on the 
subject. In respect to the second Homily in Manchu, if we 
rightly understand your statement, an edition of five hundred 
copies may be sent forth, the whole expense of which, including 
paper and printing, will amount to about £1^. If we are correct 
in this the Committee are willing to bear the expense of five 
hundred copies, by way of trial, their wish being this, viz. : that 
printed copies should be put into the hands of the most competent 
persons, who shall be invited to offer such remarks on the trans- 
lation as shall seem desirable ; especially that Dr. Morrison of 
Canton should be requested to submit copies to the inspection of 
Manchu scholars as he shall think fit. When the translation has 
been thoroughly revised the Committee will consider the propriety 
of printing a larger edition. They think that the plan of submit- 
ting copies in letters of gold to the inspection of the highest 
personages in China should probably be deferred till the transla- 
tion has been thus revised. We hope that this resolution will be 
satisfactory to you ; but the Committee, not wishing to prescribe 
a narrower limit than such as is strictly necessary, have directed 
me to say, that should the expense of an edition of five hundred 
copies of the Homily in Manchu exceed £12, they will still be 
willing to meet it, but not beyond the sum of <i^l5. 

Should you print this edition be pleased to furnish us with 
twenty-five copies, and send twenty-five copies at the least to Rev. 
Dr. Morrison, at Canton, if you have the means of doing so ; if 
not, we should wish to receive fifty copies, that we may send 
twenty-five to Canton. In this case you will be at liberty to draw a 
bill upon us for the money, within the limits specified above, in 
such manner as is most convenient. Possibly Mr. and Mrs. Biller 
may be able to assist you in this matter. Believe me, dear Sir, 
yours most sincerely, C. R. Pritchett. 

Mr. G. Borrow. 

I am not aware whether I am addressing a clergyman or a lay- 
man, and therefore shall direct as above. Will you be so kind as 
to send the MS. of the Russian Homilies to Mrs. Biller.'' 



'TARGUM — *THE TALISMAN' 177 

During Borrow's last month or two in St. Petersburg 
he printed two thin octavo volumes of translations — 
some of them verses which, undeterred by the dis- 
heartening reception of earlier efforts, he had continued 
to make from each language in succession that he had 
the happiness to acquire, although most of the poems 
are from his old portfolios. These little books were 
named Tar gum and lite Talisvian. Dr. Knapp calls 
the latter an appendix to the former. They are 
absolutely separate volumes of verse, and I reproduce 
their title-pages from the only copies that Borrow seems 
to have reserved for himself out of the hundred printed 
of each. The publishers, it will be seen, are the German 
firm that printed the Manchu New Testament, 
Schultz and Beneze. Borrow's preface to Targum is 
dated ' St. Petersburg, June 1, 1835.' Here in Targum 
we find the trial poem which in competition with a 
rival candidate had won him the privilege of going to 
Russia for the Bible Society — The Mountain Chase. 
Here also among new verses are some from the Arabic, 
the Persian, and the Turkish. If it be true, as his friend 
Hasfeld said, that here was a poet who was able to 
render another without robbing the garland of a single 
leaf — that would but prove that the poetry which 
Borrow rendered was not of the first order. Nor, taking 
another standard — the capacity to render the ballad with 
a force that captures 'the common people,' — can we 
agree with William Bodham Donne, who was delighted 
with Targum and said that ' the language and rhythm 
are vastly superior to Macaulay's Lays of Ancient 
Rome.' In Jlie Talisman we have four little poems 
from the Russian of Pushkin followed by another poem. 
The Mermaid, by the same author. Three other poems 
in Russian and Polish complete the booklet. Borrow 

M 



178 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

left behind him in St. Petersburg with his friend, Has- 
feld, a presentation copy for Pushkin, who, when he 
received it, expressed regret that he had not met his 
translator while Borrow was in St. Petersburg. 



^^SiC^^ai. 




THB' 


METBICAL TBAHSLATIONS 




Ca lie-matt. 


aiDsa asaaaan ii.iva(iira.<QiB3 






USD 




FROM THE RUSSMN 


STAUISTS. 




or 


^^corjc ^Jjorrow. 




With other Pieces. 








Pt^ian P»i^ 






St. PBTtmiUKO. 




St. P«TB«i»lP10 


tiii«r» St Seavl.. A>i> Boa.a. 






IS«&. 




I83S 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THREE VISITS TO SPAIN 

From his journey to Russia Borrow had acquired 
valuable experience, but nothing in the way of fame, 
although his mother had been able to record in a letter 
to St. Petersburg that she had heard at a Bible Society 
gathering in Norwich his name ' sounded through the 
hair by Mr. Joseph John Gurney and Mr. Cunningham, 
to her great delight. * All this is very pleasing to me,' 
she said, ' God bless you ! ' Even more pleasing to 
Borrow must have been a letter from Mary Clarke, his 
future wife, who was able to tell him that she heard 
Francis Cunningham refer to him as ' one of the most 
extraordinary and interesting individuals of the present 
day.' But these tributes were not all-satisfying to an 
ambitious man, and this Borrow undoubtedly was. 
His Russian journey was followed by five weeks of 
idleness in Norwich varied by the one excitement of 
attending a Bible meeting at Oulton with the Reverend 
Francis Cunningham in the chair, when ' Mr. George 
Borrow from Russia ' ^ made one of the usual con- 
ventional missionary speeches, Mary Clarke's brother, 
Breame Skepper, being also among the orators. Borrow 
begged for more work from the Society. He urged 
the desirability of carrying out its own idea of an 

> Norfolk Chronicle, 17th October 1835. 

179 



180 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

investigation in Portugal and perhaps also in Spain, 
and hinted that he could write a small volume con- 
cerning what he saw and heard which might cover the 
expense of the expedition/ So much persistency 
conquered. Borrow sailed from London on 6th Nov- 
ember 1835, and reached Lisbon on 12th November, this 
his first official visit to the Peninsula lasting exactly 
eleven months. The next four years and six months 
were to be spent mainly in Spain .^ Broadly the time 
divides itself in the following fashion : 

1st Tour {via Lisbon), 2nd Tour {via Cadiz), 3rd Tour {via Cadiz), 
Nov. 1835 to Oct. 1836. Nov. 1836 to Sept. 1838. Dec. 1838 to March 1840. 



Lisbon, 


Cadiz. 


Cadiz. 


Mafia. 


Lisbon. 


Seville. 


Evora. 


Seville. 


Madrid. 


Badajoz. 


Madrid. 


Gibraltar. 


Madrid. 


Salamanca. 
Cor una. 
Oviedo. 


Tangier. 




Toledo. 





* Secretary Samuel Brandram, writing to Borrow from the office of the 
Bible Society in October 1835, gave clear indication that the Society was un- 
certain how next to utilise Borrow's linguistic and missionary talents. 
Should he go to Portugal or to China was the question. In November the 
committee had decided on Portugal, although they thought it probable that 
Borrow would 'eventually go to China.' 'With Portugal he is already 
acquainted,' said Mr. Brandram in a letter of inti'oduction to the Rev. E. 
VVhiteley, the British Chaplain in Oporto. So that Borrow must really have 
wandered into Portugal in that earlier and more melancholy apprentice- 
ship to vagabondage concerning which there is so much surmise and so little 
knowledge. Had he lied about his acquaintance with Portugal he would 
certainly have been ' found out ' by this Portuguese acquaintance, with 
whom he had much social intercourse. 

' The reader who finds Borrow's Bible in Spain insufficient for his 
account of that period, and I am not of the number, may turn to the 
Letters of George Borrow to the Bible Society, from which we have already 
quoted, or to Mr. Herbei't Jenkins's Life of George Borrow. In the former 



THREE VISITS TO SPAIN 181 

What a world of adventure do the mere names of 
these places call up. Borrow entered the Peninsula at 
an exciting period of its history. Traces of the Great 
War in which Napoleon's legions faced those of 
Wellington still abounded. Here and there a bridge 
had disappeared, and some of Borrow's strange experi- 
ences on ferry-boats were indirectly due to the results 
of Napoleon's ambition/ Everywhere there was still 
war in the land. Portugal indeed had just passed 
through a revolution. The partisans of the infant 
Queen Maria ii. had been fighting with her uncle Dom 
JNliguel for eight years, and it was only a few short 
months before Borrow landed at Lisbon that Maria 
had become undisputed queen. Spain, to which 
Borrow speedily betook himself, was even in a worse 
state. She was in the throes of a six years' war. 
Queen Isabel ii., a child of three, reigned over a chaotic 
country with her mother Dona Christina as regent; 
her uncle Don Carlos was a formidable claimant to 
the throne and had the support of the absolutist and 
clerical parties. Borrow's political sympathies were 
always in the direction of absolutism ; but in religion, 
although a staunch Church of England man, he was 
certainly an anti-clerical one in Roman Catholic Spain. 



book the gi-eater part of 500 closely-printed pages is taken up with re- 
petitions of the story as told in The Bible in Spain, or with additions which 
Borrow deliberately cancelled in the work in question. In Mr. Jenkins's 
Life he will find that out of a solid volume of 496 pages exactly 212 are 
occupied with Borrow's association witli the Peninsula and his work therein. 
To the enthusiast who desires to supplement The Bible in Spain with valuable 
annotation I cordially commend both these volumes. 

^ Who that has visited Spain can for a moment doubt but that, if 
Napoleon had really conquered the Peninsula and had been able to put his 
imprint upon it as he did upon Italy, the Spain of to-day would have become 
a much greater country than it is at present — than it will be in a few short 
years. 



182 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

In any case he steered judiciously enough between 
contending factions, describing the fanatics of either 
side with vigour and sometimes with humour. Mr. 
Brandram's injunction to Borrow 'to be on his guard 
against becoming too much committed to one par- 
ticular party ' seems to have been unnecessary. 

Borrow's three expeditions to Spain have more to 
be said for them than had his journey to St. Peters- 
burg. The work of the Bible Society was and is at its 
highest point of human service when distributing either 
the Old or the New Testament in Christian countries, 
Spain, England, or another. Few there be to-day in 
any country who, in the interests of civilisation, 
would deny to the Bible a wider distribution. In a 
remote village of Spain a Bible Society's colpor- 
teur, carrying a coloured banner, sold me a copy of 
Cipriano de Valera's New Testament for a peseta. 
The villages of Spain that Borrow visited could 
even at that time compare favourably morally and 
educationally, with the villages of his own county of 
Norfolk at the same period. The morals of the agri- 
cultural labourers of the English fen country eighty 
years ago were a scandal, and the peasantry read 
nothing; more than half of them could not read. They 
had not, moreover, the humanising passion for song 
and dance that Andalusia knew. But this is not to 
deny that the Bible Society under Borrow's instru- 
mentality did a good work in Spain, nor that they did 
it on the whole in a broad and generous way. Borrow 
admits that there was a section of the Roman Catholic 
clergy ' favourably disposed towards the circulation of 
the Gospel,'^ and the Society actually fixed upon a 
Roman Catholic version of the Spanish Bible, that by 

* The Bible in Spain, ch. xlii. 



THREE VISITS TO SPAIN 183 

Scio de San Miguel,^ although this version Borrow 
considered a bad translation. Much has been said about 
the aim of the Bible Society to provide the Bible with- 
out notes or comment — in its way a most meritorious 
aim, although then as now opposed to the instinct of 
a large number of the priests of the Roman Church. 
It is true that their attitude does not in any way 
possess the sanction of the ecclesiastical authorities. 
It may be urged, indeed, that the interpretation of 
the Bible by a priest, usually of mature judgment, and 
frequently of a higher education than the people with 
whom he is associated, is at least as trustworthy as its 
interpretation at the hands of very partially educated 
young women and exceedingly inadequately equipped 
young men who to-day provide interpretation and com- 
ment in so many of the Sunday Schools of Protestant 
countries.^ 

Behold George Borrow, then, first in Portugal and 
a little later in Spain, upon his great mission — avowedly 
at first a tentative mission — rather to see what were 
the prospects for Bible distribution than to distribute 
Bibles. But Borrow's zeal knew no such limitations. 
Before very long he had a shop in one of the principal 
streets of Madrid — the Calle del Principe — much more 

1 The Old and New Testament, in ten volumes, were first issued in Spanish 
at Valencia in 1790-93. When in Madrid 1 picked up on a second-hand 
bookstall a copy of a cheap Spanish version of Scio's New Testament, which 
bears a much earlier date than the one Borrow carried. It was published, it 
will be noted, two years before Borrow published his translation of Klinger's 
ribald book Faustus : — 

' El Nuevo Testament©, Traducido al Espaiiol de la Vulgata Latina por el 
Rmo. P. Phiiipe Scio de S. Miguel. Paris : En la Imprenta de J. Smith, 1823.' 

- This kind of interpretation is not restricted to the youthful Sunday 
School teacher. At a meeting of the Bible Society held at Norwich — 
Sorrow's own city— on 29th May 1913, Mrs. Florence Barclay, the author of 
many popular novels, thus addressed the gathering, I quote from the 



184 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

in the heart of things than the very prosperous Bible 
Society of our day ventures upon/ Meanwhile he is at 
present in Portugal not very certain of his movements, 
and he writes to his old friend Dr. Bowring the follow- 
ing letter with a request with which Bowring complied, 
although in the coldest manner : 

Eastern Daily Press : ' She had heard sometimes a shallow form of criticism 
which said that it was impossible that in actual reality any man should 
have lived and breathed three days and three nights in the interior of 
a fish. Might she remind the meeting that the Lord Jesus Christ, who 
never made mistakes, said Himself, ''As Jonah was three days and three 
nights in the interior of the sea monster." Please note that in the Greek 
the word was not " whale/' but " sea monster." And then, let us remember, 
that we were told that the Lord God had prepared the great fish in 
order that it should swallow Jonah. She did suggest that if mere man 
nowadays could construct a submarine, which went down to the depths of 
the ocean and came up again when he pleased, it did not require very much 
faith to believe that Almighty God could specially prepare a great fish which 
should rescue His servant, to whom He meant to give another chance, from 
the depths of the sea, and land him in due course upon the shore. 
(Applause).' These crude views, which ignored the symbolism of Nineveh 
as a fish, now universally accepted by educated people, were not, however, 
endorsed by Dr. Beeching, the learned Dean of Norwich, who in the same 
gathering expressed the point of view of more scholarly Christians : — ' He 
would not distinguish inspired writing from fiction. He would say there 
could be inspired fiction just as well as inspired facts, and he would point to 
the story of the pi'odigal son as a wonderful example from the Bible of 
inspired fiction. There were a good many other examples in the Old Testa- 
ment, and he had not the faintest doubt that the story of Jonah was one. 
It was on the same level as the prodigal son. It was a story told to teach 
the people a distinct truth.' 

1 When in Madi-id in May 1913 I called upon Mr. William Summers, the 
courteous Secretary of the Madrid Branch of the British and Foreign Bible 
Society in the Flor Alta. Mr. Summers informs me that the issues of the 
British and Foreign Bible Society, Bibles and Testaments, in Spain for the 
past three years are as follows : 

Year. Bibles. Testaments. Portions. Total. 

1910, . . 6,309 8,971 70,594 84,874 

1911, . . 5,665 11,481 79,525 96,671 

1912, . . 9,083 11,842 85,024 105,949 

The Calle del Principe is now rapidly being pulled down and new build- 
ings taking the place of those Borrow knew. 



THREE VISITS TO SPAIN 185 

To Dr. John Bowring. 

EvoRA IN THE Alemte.to, 27 Decv. 1836. 
Deak Sir, — Pray excuse me for troubling you with these hnes. 
I write to you, as usual, for assistance in my projects, convinced 
that you will withhold none which it may be in your power to 
afford, more especially when by so doing you will perhaps be 
promoting the happiness of our fellow creatures. I returned from 
dear, glorious Russia about three months since, after having 
edited there the Manchu New Testament in eight volumes, I am 
now in Portugal, for the Society still do me the honour of employ- 
ing me. For the last six weeks I have been wandering amongst the 
wilds of the Alemtejo and have introduced myself to its rustics, 
banditti, etc., and become very popular amongst them, but as it 
is much more easy to introduce oneself to the cottage than the 
hall (though I am not entirely unknown in the latter), I want you 
to give or procure me letters to the most liberal and influential 
minds of Portugal. I likewise want a letter from the Foreign Office 
to Lord De Walden, in a word, I want to make what interest I 
can towards obtaining the admission of the Gospel of Jesus into 
the public schools of Portugal which are about to be established. 
I beg leave to state that this is my plan, and not other persons', as 
I was merely sent over to Portugal to observe the disposition of 
the people, therefore I do not wish to be named as an Agent of 
the B.S., but as a person who has plans for the mental improve- 
ment of the Portuguese ; should I receive these letters within the 
space of six weeks it will be time enough, for before setting up my 
machine in Portugal I wish to lay the foundation of something 
similar in Spain. When you send the Portuguese letters direct 
thus : 

Mr. George Borrow, 

to the care of Mr. Wilby, 

Rua Dos Restauradores, Lisbon. 
I start for Spain to-morrow, and I want letters something 
similar (there is impudence for you) for Madrid, which I should like 
to have as soon as possible. I do not much care at present for an 
introduction to the Ambassador at Madrid, as I shall not 
commence operations seriously in Spain until I have disposed of 
Portugal. I will not apologise for writing to you in this manner, 



186 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

for you know me, but I will tell you one thing, which is that the 
letter which you procured for me, on my going to St. Petersburg, 
from Lord Palmerston, assisted me wonderfully. I called twice at 
your domicile on my return ; the first time you were in Scotland, the 
second in France, and I assure you I cried with vexation. Re- 
member me to Mrs. Bowring and God bless you. G. Borrow. 

P.S. — I am told that Mendizabal is liberal, and has been in 
England ; perhaps he would assist me. 

During this eleven months' stay in the Peninsula 
Borrow made his way to Madrid, and here he inter- 
viewed the British Minister, Sir George Villiers, after- 
wards fourth Earl of Clarendon, and had received a 
quite remarkable encouragement from him for the 
publication and distribution of the Bible. He also 
interviewed the Spanish Prime Minister, Mendizabal, 
' whom it is as difficult to get nigh as it is to approach 
the North Pole,' and he has given us a picturesque 
account of the interview in The Bible in Spain. It was 
agreed that 5000 copies of the Spanish Testament were 
to be reprinted from Scio's text at the expense of the 
Bible Society, and all these Borrow was to handle as 
he thought fit. Then Borrow made his way to Granada, 
where, under date 30th August 1836, his autograph 
may be read in the visitors' book of the Alhambra : 

George Borrow Norvicensis. 

Here he studied his friends the gypsies, now and prob- 
ably then, as we may assume from his Zincali, the 
sordid scum on the hillside of that great city, but now 
more assuredly than then unutterably demoralised by 
the numerous but curious tourists who visit this rabble 
under police protection, the very policeman or gendarme 
not despising a peseta for his protective services. 
But Borrow's hobbies included the Romanies of 
every land, and a year later he produced and published 



THREE VISITS TO SPAIN 



187 



a gypsy version of the Gospel of St. Luke.^ In 
October 1836 Borrow was back in England. He found 
that the Bible Society approved of him. In November 
of the same year he left London for Cadiz on his second 



I 111 \>^i^ liliUrAsu, ov^ iv» ^rncv^i Wtu Uvl |t^ U L iWiul 
Kmwi^V AtJk ol Y^nS , [tr it f^ »-W ^^. ^* K* 

W lliHiMllru WVWvVutiH (j-jlHMv^h- ll lOlHl i)U«k^ >ffi^^\ LtWvtL 
^tk>M\ |-HM0l( tUvH*^ 



PORTION OF A LETTER FROM GEORGE BORROW TO THE 
REV. SAMUEL BRANDRAM. 

Written from Madrid, 13th May 1838. 

1 Embeo e Mdjaro Lucas. El Evangelio segiin S. Lucas traducido al 
Romani 6 dialecto de los Gitanos de EspaUa, 1857. Two later copies in my 
possession bear on their title-pages 'Lundra, 1871' and 'Lundra, 1872.' 
But the Bible Society in Spain has long ceased to handle or to sell any gypsy 
version of St. Luke's Gospel. 



188 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

visit to Spain. The journey is described in The Bible 
in Spain ; ^ but here, from my Borrow Papers, is a kind 
letter that Mr. Brandram wrote to Borrow's mother 
on the occasion : 

No. 10 East Street, Jany. \\, 1837. 
My dear Madam, — I have the joyful news to send you that 
your son has again safely arrived at Madrid. His journey we 
were aware was exceedingly perilous, more perilous than we should 
have allowed him to take had we sooner known the extent of the 
danger. He begs me to write, intending to write to you himself 
without delay. He has suffered from the intense cold, but nothing 
beyond inconvenience. Accept my congratulations, and my best 
wishes that your dear son may be preserved to be your comfort in 
declining years — and may the God of all consolation himself deign 
to comfort your heart by the truths of that holy volume your son 
is endeavouring, in connection with our Society, to spread abroad. 
— Believe me, dear Madam, yours faithfully, A. Brandram. 

Mrs. Borrow, Norwich. 

A brilliant letter from Seville followed soon after, 
and then he went on to Madrid, not without many 
adventures. ' The cold nearly killed me,' he said. * I 
swallowed nearly two bottles of brandy ; it affected 
me no more than warm water.' This to kindly Mr. 
Brandram, who clearly had no teetotaller proclivities, for 
the letter, as he said, ' filled his heart with joy and glad- 
ness.' Meanwhile those five thousand copies of the 
New Testament were a-printing. Borrow superintending 
the work with the assistance of a new friend. Dr. Usoz. 
* As soon as the book is printed and issued,' he tells Mr. 
Brandram, ' I will ride forth from Madrid into the 
wildest parts of Spain, . . .' and so, after some corres- 
pondence with the Society which is quite entertaining, 
he did. The reader of The Bible in Spain will note 
some seventy separate towns and villages that Borrow 

* And in Darlow's Letters of George Borrow to the Bible Society, pp. 180-4. 



THREE VISITS TO SPAIN 189 

visited, not without countless remarkable adventures on 
the way. ' I felt some desire,' he says in The Romany 
Rye, *to meet with one of those adventures which 
upon the roads of England are generally as plentiful as 
blackberries in autumn.' Assuredly in this tour of 
Spanish villages Borrow met with no lack of adventures. 
The committee of the Bible Society authorised this 
tour in March 1837, and in May Borrow started off on 
horseback attended by his faithful servant, Antonio. 
This tour was to last five months, and 'if I am spared,' 
he writes to his friend Hasfeld, ' and have not fallen a 
prey to sickness, Carlists, banditti, or wild beasts, I 
shall return to Madrid.' He hopes a little later, he 
tells Hasfeld, to be sent to China. We have then 
a glimpse of his servant, the excellent Antonio, which 
supplements that contained in TJie Bible of Spain. ' He 
is inordinately given to drink, and is of so quarrelsome 
a disposition that he is almost constantly involved in 
some broil. '^ Not all his weird experiences were con- 
veyed in his letters to the Bible Society's secretary. 
Some of these letters, however — the more highly 
coloured ones — were used in The Bible in Spain, word for 
word, and wonderful reading they must have made for 
the secretary, who indeed asked for more, although, with 
a view to keeping Borrow humble — an impossible task — 
Mr. Brandram takes occasion to say ' Mr. Graydon's 
letters, as well as yours, are deeply interesting,' Gray- 
don being a hated rival, as we shall see. The question 
of L.S.D. was also not forgotten by the assiduous 
secretary. ' I know you are no accountant,' he writes, 
* but do not forget there are some who are,' and a 
financial document was forwarded to Borrow about 
this time which we reproduce in facsimile. 

^ Darlow, Letters of George Borrow to the Bible Society. 



190 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

But now Borrow was happy, for next to the adven- 
tures of five glorious months in the villages between 




FACSIMILE OF AN ACCOUNT OF GEORGE BORROWS EXPENSES IN 
SPAIN MADE OUT BY THE BIBLE SOCIETY 



Madrid and Coruna nothing could be more to the 
taste of Borrow than a good wholesome quarrel. He 
was imprisoned by order of the Spanish Government 



THREE VISITS TO SPAIN 191 

and released on the intervention of the British Embassy/ 
He tells the story so graphically in The Bible in Spain 
that it is superfluous to repeat it ; but here he does not 
tell of the great quarrel with regard to Lieutenant 
Graydon that led him to attack that worthy zealot in 
a letter to the Bible Society. This attack did indeed 
cause the Society to recall Graydon, whose zealous 
proclamation of anti-Romanism must however have 
been more to the taste of some of its subscribers than 
Borrows trimming methods. Moreover, Graydon 
worked for love of the cause and required no salary, 
which must always have been in his favour. Borrow 
was ten days in a Madrid prison, and there, as ever, he 
had extraordinary adventures if we may believe his 
own narrative, but they are much too good to be torn 
from their context. Suffice to say here that in the actual 
correspondence we find breezy controversy between 
Borrow and the Society. Borrow thought that the 
secretary had called the accuracy of his statements in 
question as to this or that particular in his conduct. 
Ever a fighter, he appealed to the British Embassy for 
confirmation of his word, and finally Mr. Brandram 
suggested he should come back to England for a time 
and talk matters over with the members of the com- 
mittee. In the beginning of September 1838 Borrow 
was again in England, when he issued a lengthy and 
eloquent defence of his conduct and a report on ' Past 
and Future Operations in Spain.' ^ In December of 

^ The story of all the negotiations concerning this imprisonment and 
release is told by Dr. Knapp {Life, vol. i. pp. 279-297), and is supplemented 
by Mr. Herbert Jenkins by valuable documents from the F'oreign Office 
Papers at the Record Office. 

2 Printed by Mr. Darlow in Letters of George Borrow to the Bible Society, 
pp. 359-379. 



192 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

the same year Borrow was again on his way to Cadiz 
upon his third and last visit to Spain. 

Borrow reached Cadiz on this his last visit on 31st 
December 1838, and went straight to Seville, where he 
arrived on 2nd January 1839. Here he took a beautiful 
little house, ' a paradise in its way,' in the Plazuela de 
la Pila Seca, and furnished it — clearly at the expense of 
his friend Mrs. Clarke of Oulton, who must have sent 
him a cheque for the purpose. He had been corres- 
ponding regularly with Mrs. Clarke, who had told him 
of her difficulties with lawyers and relatives, and Borrow 
had advised her to cut the Gordian knot and come to 
Spain. But Mrs. Clarke and her daughter, Henrietta, 
did not arrive from England until June. 

In the intervening months Borrow had been work- 
ing more in his own interests than in those of the 
patient Bible Society, for he started to gather material 
for his Gypsies of Spain, and this book was for the 
most part actually written in Seville. It was at this 
period that he had the many interviews with Colonel 
Elers Napier that we quote at length in our next 
chapter. 

A little later he is telling Mr. Brandram of his 
adventure with the blind girl of Manzanares who could 
talk in the Latin tongue, which she had been taught 
by a Jesuit priest, an episode which he retold in 
llie Bible in Spain. 'When shall we hear,' he asks, 
' of an English rector instructing a beggar girl in the 
language of Cicero ? ' To which Mr. Brandram, who 
was rector of Beckenham, replied ' Cui bono ? ' The 
letters of this period are the best that he ever wrote, 
and are incorporated more exactly than the earlier ones 
in The Bible in Spain. 

Four letters to his mother within the period of his 



J 




St-. 



WHERE BORROW LIVED IN MADRID 

The house of Maria Diaz in the 
Calle del Santiago. Borrow occu- 
pied the third floor front. A 
laundry is now in possession. 







THE CALLE DEL PRINCIPE, MADRID 

Where Borrow opened a shop 

for the sale of New Testaments, 

which was finally closed by order 

of the Government. 



1 



THREE VISITS TO SPAIN 193 

second and third Spanish visits may well be presented 
together here from my Borrow Papers : 

To Mrs. Ann Borrow 

Madrid, July 27, 1838. 
My dear Mother, — I am in perfect health though just returned 
from a long expedition in which I have been terribly burnt by the 
sun. In about ten days I sold nearly a thousand Testaments 
among the labourers of the plains and mountains of Castille and 
La Mancha. Everybody in Madrid is wondering and saying such 
a thing is a miracle, as I have not entered a town, and the country 
people are very poor and have never seen or heard of the Testa- 
ment before. But I confess to you that I dislike my situation and 
begin to think that I have been deceived ; the B.S. have had 
another person on the sea-coast who has nearly ruined their cause 
in Spain by circulating seditious handbills and tracts. The con- 
sequence has been that many of my depots have been seized in 
which I kept my Bibles in various parts of the country, for the 
government think that he is employed by me ; I told the B.S. all 
along what would be the consequence of employing this man, but 
they took huff and would scarce believe me, and now all my words 
are come true ; I do not blame the government in the slightest 
degree for what they have done in many points, they have shown 
themselves to be my good friends, but they have been driven to 
the step by the insane conduct of the person alluded to. I told 
them frankly in my last letter that I would leave their service if 
they encouraged him ; for I will not be put in prison again on his 
account, and lose another servant by the gaol fever, and then 
obtain neither thanks nor reward. I am going out of town again 
in a day or two, but I shall now write very frequently, therefore 
be not alarmed for I will run into no danger. Burn this letter 
and speak to no one about it, nor any others that I may send. 
God bless you, my dear mother. G. B. 

To Mrs. Ann Borrow, Willow Lane, St. Giles, 
Norwich (Inglaterra) 

Madrid, August 5, 1838. 
My dear Mother, — I merely write this to inform you that I 

N 



194 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

am back to Madrid from my expedition. I have been very 
successful and have sold a great many Testaments. Indeed all the 
villages and towns within thirty miles have been supplied. In 
Madrid itself I can do nothing as I am closely watched by order 
of the government and not permitted to sell, so that all I do is by 
riding out to places where they cannot follow me. I do not blame 
them, for they have much to complain of, though nothing of me, 
but if the Society will countenance such men as they have lately 
done in the South of Spain they must expect to reap the conse- 
quences. It is very probable that I may come to England in a 
little time, and then you will see me ; but do not talk any more 
about yourself being ' no more seen,' for it only serves to dishearten 
me, and God knows I have enough to make me melancholy already. 
I am in a great hurry and cannot write any more at present. — I 
remain, dear mother, yours affectionately, 

George Borrow. 

To Mrs. Ann Borrow 

(No date.) 
My dear Mama, — As I am afraid that you may not have 
received my last letter in consequence of several couriers having 
been stopped, I write to inform you that I am quite well. 

I have been in some difficulties. I was selling so many Testa- 
ments that the priests became alarmed, and prevailed on the 
government to put a stop to my selling any more; they were 
likewise talking of prosecuting me as a witch, but they have 
thought better of it. I hear it is very cold in England, pray take 
care of yourself, I shall send you more in a few weeks. — God bless 
you, my dear mama, G. B. 

It was in the middle of his third and last visit to 
Spain that Borrow wrote this next letter to his mother 
which gives the first suggestion of the romantic and 
happy termination of his final visit to the Peninsula : 

To Mrs. Ann Borrow 

Seville, Spain, April 27, 1839. 
My dear Mother, — I should have written to you before I left 
Madrid, but I had a long and dangerous journey to make, and I 



THREE VISITS TO SPAIN 195 

wished to get it over before saying anything to you. I am now 
safely arrived, by the blessing of God, in Seville, which, in my 
opinion, is the most delightful town in the world. If it were not 
a strange place with a strange language I know you would like to 
live in it, but it is leather too late in the day for you to learn 
Spanish and accommodate yourself to Spanish ways. Before I left 
Madrid I accomplished a great deal, having sold upwards of one 
thousand Testaments and nearly five hundred Bibles, so tliat at 
present very few remain ; indeed, not a single Bible, and I was 
obliged to send away hundreds of people who wanted to purchase, 
but whom I could not supply. All this has been done without 
the slightest noise or disturbance or anything that could give cause 
of displeasure to the government, so that I am now on very good 
terms with the authorities, though they are perfectly aware of 
what I am about. Should the Society think proper to be guided 
by the experience which I have acquired, and my knowledge of the 
country and the people, they might if they choosed sell at least 
twelve thousand Bibles and Testaments yearly in Spain, but let 
them adopt or let any other people adopt any other principle than 
that on which I act and everything will miscarry. All the diffi- 
culties, as I told my friends the time I was in England, which I 
have had to encounter were owing to the faults and imprudencies 
of other people, and, I may say, still are owing. Two Methodist 
schoolmasters have lately settled at Cadiz, and some little time 
ago took it into their heads to speak and preach, as I am informed, 
against the Virgin Mary ; information was instantly sent to 
Madrid, and the blame, or part of it, was as usual laid to me; 
however, I found means to clear myself, for I have powerful friends 
in Madrid, who are well acquainted with my views, and who inter- 
ested themselves for me, otherwise I should have been sent out of 
the country, as I believe the two others have been or will be. I 
have said nothing on this point in my letters home, as people 
would perhaps say that I was lukewarm, whereas, on the contrary, 
I think of nothing but the means best adapted to promote the 
cause ; but I am not one of those disposed to run a ship on a rock 
when only a little skill is necessary to keep her in the open sea. 

I hope Mrs, Clarke will write shortly; tell her if she wishes 
for a retreat I have found one here for her and Henrietta. I have 
my eye on a beautiful one at fifteen pence a day. I call it a small 



196 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

house, though it is a paradise in its way, having a stable, court- 
yard, fountain, and twenty rooms. She has only to write to my 
address at Madrid and I shall receive the letter without fail. 
Henrietta had better bring with her a Spanish grammar and 
pocket dictionary, as not a word of English is spoken here. The 
house-dog — perhaps a real English bulldog would be better — like- 
wise had better come, as it may be useful. God bless you there- 
fore for the present, my dearest mother. George Borrow. 

Borrow had need of friends more tolerant of his 
idiosyncrasies than the ' powerful friends ' he describes 
to his mother, for the Secretary of the Bible Society 
was still in a critical mood : — 

You narrate your perilous journey to Seville, and say at the 
beginning of the description, ' my usual wonderful good fortune 
accompanying us."" This is a mode of speaking to which we are 
not accustomed — it savours, some of our friends would say, a little 
of the profane.^ 

On 29th July 1839 Borrow was instructed by his 
Committee to return to England, but he was already 
on the way to Tangier, whence in September he wrote 
a long and interesting letter to Mr. Brandram, which 
was afterwards incorporated in The Bible in Spain. 
He had left Mrs. Clarke and her daughter in Seville, 
and they joined him at Gibraltar later. We find him 
en route for Tangier, staying two days with Mr. John 
M. Brackenbury, the British Consul in Cadiz, who 
found him a most fascinating man. 

His Tangier life is fully described in The Bible in 
Spain. Here he picked up a Jewish youth, Hayim 
Ben Attar, who returned to Spain as his servant, and 
afterwards to England. 

Borrow, at the end of September, was back again 
in Seville, in his house near the cathedral, in the 

' Darlow, George Barrow's Letters to the Bible Society, p. 414. 



THREE VISITS TO SPAIN 197 

Plaziiela de la Pila Seca, which, when I visited Seville 
in the spring of this year (1913), I found had long 
been destroyed to make way for new buildings. Here 
he received the following letter from Mr. George Browne 
of the Bible Society : — 

To Mr. Borrow 

Bible House, Oct. 7, 1839. 
My dear Friend, — Mr. Brandram and myself being both on 
the eve of a long journey, I have only time to inform you that 
yours of the 2d ult. from Tangier, and 21st from Cadiz came to 
hand this morning. Before this time you have doubtless received 
Mr. Brandram's letter, accompanying the resolution of the Comee., 
of which I apprised you, but which was delayed a few days, for 
the purpose of reconsideration. We are not able to suggest pre- 
cisely the course you should take in regard to the books left at 
Madrid and elsewhere, and how far it may be absolutely necessary 
or not for you to visit that city again before you return. The 
books you speak of, as at Seville, may be sent to Gibraltar rather 
than to England, as well as any books you may deem it expedient 
or find it necessary to bring out of the country. As soon as your 
arrangements are completed we shall look for the pleasure of 
seeing you in this country. The haste in which I am compelled 
to write allows me to say no more than that my best wishes 
attend you, and that I am, with sincere regard, yours truly, 

G. BuOWNE. 

I thank you for your kind remembrance of Mrs. Browne. Did 
I thank you for your letter to her ? She feels, I assure you, very 
much obliged. Your description of Tangier will be another 
interesting ' morceau ' for her. 

' Where is Borrow? ' asked the Bible Society mean- 
while of the Consuls at Seville and Cadiz, but Borrow 
had ceased to care. He hoped to become a successful 
author with his Gypsies ; he would at any rate secure 
independence by marriage, which must have been 
already mooted. In November he and Mrs. Clarke 



198 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

were formally betrothed, and would have been married in 
Spain, but a Protestant marriage was impossible there. 
When preparing to leave Seville he had one of those 
fiery quarrels, with which his life was to be studded. 
This time it was with an official of the city over a pass- 
port, and the official promptly locked him up for thirty 
hours. Hence the following letter in response to his 
complaint. The writer is Mr., afterwards Sir, George 
Jerningham, then Secretary of Legation at Madrid, 
who it may be mentioned came from Costessey, four 
miles from Norwich. It is written from the British 
Legation, and is dated 23rd December 1839 : 

I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your two 
letters, the one without date, the second dated the 19^/i November 
(which however ought to have been December), respecting the 
outrageous conduct pursued towards you at Seville by the Alcalde 
of the district in which you resided. I lost no time in addressing 
a strong representation thereon to the Spanish Minister, and I 
have to inform you that he has acquainted me with his having 
written to Seville for exact information upon the whole subject, 
and that he has promised a further answer to my representation 
as soon as his inquiries shall have been answered. In the mean- 
time I shall not fail to follow up your case with proper activity. 

Borrow was still in Seville, hard at work upon the 
Gypsies, all through the first three months of the year 
1840. In April the three friends left Cadiz for London. 
A letter of this period from Mr. Brackenbury, the 
British Consul at Cadiz, is made clear by these facts : 

To George Borrow, Esq. 

British Consulate, Cadiz, January 27th, 1840, 

My dear Sir, — I received on the 19th your very acceptable 

letter without date, and am heartily rejoiced to find that you have 

received satisfaction for the insult, and that the Alcalde is likely 

to be punished for his unjustifiable conduct. If you come to 



THREE VISITS TO SPAIN 199 

Cadiz your baggage may be landed and deposited at the gates to 
be shipped with yourselves wherever the steamer may go, in which 
case the authorities would not examine it, if you bring it into 
Cadiz it would be examined at the gates — or, if you were to get 
it examined at the Custom House at Seville and there sealed with 
the seal of the Customs — it might then be transhipped into the 
steamer or into any other vessel without being subjected to any 
examination. If you take your horse, the agents of the steamer 
ought to be apprized of your intention, that they may be prepared, 
which I do not think they generally are, with a suitable box. 

Consuls are not authorised to unite Protestant subjects in the 
bonds of Holy Matrimony in popish countries — which seems a 
peculiar hardship, because popish priests could not, if they 
would — hence in Spain no Protestants can be legally married. 
Marriages solemnised abroad according to the law of that land 
wheresoever the parties may at the time be inhabitants are valid 
— but the law of Spain excludes their priests from performing 
these ceremonies where both parties are Protestants — and where 
one is a Papist, except a dispensation be obtained from the Pope. 
So you must either go to Gibraltar — or wait till you arrive in 
England. I have represented the hardship of such a case more 
than once or twice to Government. In my report upon the 
Consular Act, 6 Geo. iv. cap. 87 — eleven years ago — I suggested 
that provision should be made to legalise marriages solemnised 
by tiie Consul within the Consulate, and that such marriages 
should be registered in the Consular Office — and that duly certified 
copies thereof should be equivalent to certificates of marriages 
registered in any church in England. These suggestions not having 
been acted upon, I brought the matter under the consideration of 
Lord John Russell (I being then in England at the time of his 
altering the Marriage Act), and proposed that Consuls abroad 
should have the power of magistrates and civil authorities at 
home for receiving the declarations of British subjects who might 
wish to enter into the marriage state — but they feared lest the 
introduction of such a clause, simple and efficacious as it would 
have been, might have endangered the fate of the Bill ; and so we 
are as Protestants deprived of all power of being legally married 
in Spain. 

What sort of a horse is your hack ? — What colour ? What age ? 



200 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Would he carry me ? — What his action ? What his price ? Because 
if in all these points he would suit me, perhaps you would give 
me the refusal of him. You will of course enquire whether your 
Arab may be legally exported. 

All my family beg to be kindly remembered to you. — I am, my 
dear sir, most faithfully yours, J. M. Brackenbury. 

There is a young gentleman here, who is in Spain partly on 
account of his health — partly for literary purposes. I will give 
him, with your leave, a line of introduction to you whenever he 
may go to Seville. He is the Honourable R. Dundas Murray, 
brother of Lord Elibank, a Scottish nobleman. 



CHAPTER XIX 

BORROWS SPANISH CIRCLE 

There are many interesting personalities that pass before 
us in Borrow's three separate narratives,^ as they may be 
considered, of his Spanish experiences. We would fain 
know^ more concerning the two excellent secretaries 
of the Bible Society — Samuel Brandram and Joseph 
Jowett. We merely know that the former was rector 
of Beckenham and was one of the Society's secretaries 
until his death in 1850;^ that the latter was rector of 
Silk Willoughby in Lincolnshire, and belonged to the 
same family as Jowett of Balliol. But there are many 
quaint characters in Borrow's own narrative to whom we 
are introduced. There is Maria Diaz, for example, his 
landlady in the house in the Calle de Santiago in Madrid, 
and her husband, Juan Lopez, also assisted Borrow in 
his Bible distribution. Very eloquent are Borrow's 
tributes to the pair in the pages of The Bible in Spain. 
' Honour to Maria Diaz, the quiet, dauntless, clever, 
Castilian female ! I were an ungrate not to speak well 
of her.' We get a glimpse of Maria and her husband 
long years afterwards when a pensioner in a Spanish 

' The accounts in The Bible in Spain, The Gypsies of Spain, and the Letters 
to the Bible Society. 

^ The only ' Samuel Brandram ' in the Dictionary of National Biography 
is a reciter who died in 1892 ; he certainly had less claim to the distinction 
than his namesake. 

801 



202 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

almshouse revealed himself as the son of Sorrow's 
friends. Eduardo Lopez was only eight years of age 
when Borrow was in Madrid, and he really adds 
nothing to our knowledge.^ Then there were those 
two incorrigible vagabonds — Antonio Buchini, his 
Greek servant with an Italian name, and Benedict 
Mol, the Swiss of Lucerne, who turns up in all 
sorts of improbable circumstances as the seeker 
of treasure in the Church of St. James of Com- 
postella — only a masterly imagination could have 
made him so interesting. Concerning these there is 
nothing to supplement Borrow's own story. But we 
have attractive glimpses of Borrow in the frequently 
quoted narrative of Colonel Napier,^ and this is so 
illuminating that I venture to reproduce it at greater 
length than previous biographers have done. Edward 
Elers Napier, who was born in 1808, was the son of one 
Edward Elers of the Royal Navy. His widow married 
the famous Admiral Sir Charles Napier, who adopted 
her four children by her first husband. Edward Elers, 
the younger, or Edward Napier, as he came to be called, 
was educated at Sandhurst and entered the army, 
serving for some years in India. Later his regiment 
was ordered to Gibraltar, and it was thence that he 
made several sporting excursions into Spain and 
Morocco. Later he served in Egypt, and when, through 
ill-health, he retired in 1843 on half-pay, he lived for 
some years in Portugal. In 1854 he returned to the 
army and did good work in the Crimea, becoming 
a lieutenant-general in 1864. He died in 1870. He 



^ See 'Footprints of George Borrow' by A. G. Jayne in The Bible in the 
World for July 1908. 

^ Excursions along the Shores of the Mediterranean, by Lieut-Colonel 
E. Napier, vol. ii. (Henry Colburn), 1842. 



BORROWS SPANISH CIRCLE 203 

wrote, in addition to these Excursions, several other 
books, inekiding Scenes and Sports in Foreign Lands} 
It was during his military career at Gibraltar that he 
met George Borrow at Seville, as the following ex- 
tracts from his book testify. Borrow's pretension to 
have visited the East is characteristic — and amusing : — 

1839. Saturday itth. — Out early, sketching at the Alcazar, 
After breakfast it set in a day of rain, and I was reduced to wander 
about the galleries overlooking the ' patio.' Nothing so dreary 
and out of character as a rainy day in Spain. AVhilst occupied in 
moralising over the dripping water-spouts, I observed a tall, 
gentlemanly-looking man, dressed in a zamarra,- leaning over the 
balustrades, and apparently engaged in a similar manner with 
myself. Community of thoughts and occupation generally tends 
to bring people together. PVom the stranger's complexion, which 
was fair, but with brilliant black eyes, I concluded he was not 
a Spaniard ; in short, there was something so remarkable in his 
appearance that it was difficult to say to what nation he might 
belong. He was tali, with a commanding appearance ; yet, though 
apparently in the flower of manhood, his hair was so deeply tinged 
with the winter of either age or sorrow as to be nearly snow-white. 
Under these circumstances, I was rather puzzled as to what 
language I should address him in. At last, putting a bold face 
on the matter, I approached him with a 'Bonjour, monsieur, 
quel triste temps ! ' 

' Yes, sir,' replied he in the purest Parisian accent ; ' and it is 
very unusual weather here at this time of the year.' 

' Does " monsieur" intend to be any time at Seville ? ' asked I. 
He replied in the affirmative. We were soon on a friendly foot- 
ing, and from his varied information I was both amused and 
instructed. Still I became more than ever in the dark as to his 
nationality ; I found he could speak English as fluently as French. 
I tried him on the Italian track ; again he was perfectly at home. 



^ See Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xl. pp. 64-5.5. 
■^ A sheepskin jacket with the wool outside, a costume much worn here in 
cold weather. 



204 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

He had a Greek servant, to whom he gave his orders in Romaic. 
He conversed in good Castilian with ' mine host ' ; exchanged 
a German salutation with an Austrian Baron, at the time an 
inmate of the fonda ; and on mentioning to him my morning visit 
to Triano, which led to some remarks on the gypsies, and the 
probable place from whence they derived their origin, he expressed 
his belief that it was from Moultan, and said that, even to this 
day, they retained many Moultanee and Hindoostanee expressions, 
such as ' p^nee ' (water), ' buree panee "' ^ (the sea), etc. He was 
rather startled when I replied ' in Hindee,"* but was delighted on 
finding I was an Indian, and entered freely, and with depth and 
acuteness, on the affairs of the East, most of which part of the 
world he had visited. 

In such varied discourse did the hours pass so swiftly away 
that we were not a little surprised when Pepe, the ' mozo ' (and I 
verily believe all Spanish waiters are called Pepe), announced the 
hour of dinner ; after which we took a long walk together on the 
banks of the river. But, on our return, I was as much as ever in 
ignorance as to who might be my new and pleasant acquaintance. 

I took the first opportunity of questioning Antonio Baillie 

(Buchini) on the subject, and his answer only tended to increase 

my curiosity. He said that nobody knew what nation the 

mysterious Unknown ' belonged to, nor what were his motives 

for travelling. In his passport he went by the name of , and 

as a British subject, but in consequence of a suspicion being enter- 
tained that he was a Russian spy, the police kept a sharp look-out 
over him. Spy or no spy, I found him a very agreeable com- 
panion ; and it was agreed that on the following day we should 
visit together the ruins of Italica. 

May 5. — After breakfast, the ' Unknown ' and myself, 
mounting our horses, proceeded on our expedition to the ruins of 
Italica. Crossing the river, and proceeding through the populous 
suburb of Triano, already mentioned, we went over the same 
extensive plain that I had traversed in going to San Lucar, but 
keeping a little more to the right a short ride brought us in sight 
of the Convent of San Isidrio, surrounded by tall cypress and 
waving date-trees. This once richly-endowed religious establish- 

^ ' paaee ' is masculine (marginal note in pencil). 



BORROWS SPANISH CIRCLE 205 

ment is, together with the small neighbouring village of Santi 
Ponci, I believe, the property of the Duke of Medina Coeli, at 
whose expense the excavations are now carried on at the latter 
place, which is the ancient site of the Roman Italica. 

We sat down on a fragment of the walls, and sadly recalling 
the splendour of those times of yore, contrasted with the desola- 
tion around us, the ' Unknown ' began to feel the vein of poetry 
creeping through his inward soul, and gave vent to it by reciting, 
with great emphasis and effect, and to the astonishment of the 
wondering peasant, who must have thought him ' loco,' the follow- 
ing well-known and beautiful lines : — 

' Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower, grown, 
Matted and massed together, hillocks heap'd 
On what were chambers, arch crush'd, column strown 

In fragments, choked up vaults, and frescoes steep'd 
In subterranean damps, where the owl peep'd, 

Deeming it midnight ; Temples, baths, or halls — 
Pronounce who can : for all that Learning reap'd 
From her research hath been, that these are walls.' 

I had been too much taken up with the scene, the verses, and 
the strange being who was repeating them with so much feeling, 
to notice the approach of one who now formed the fourth person 
of our party. This was a slight female figure, beautiful in the 
extreme, but whom tattered garments, raven hair (which fell in 
matted elf-locks over her naked shoulders), swarthy complexion, and 
flashing eyes, proclaimed to be of the wandering tribe of ' gitanos." 
From an intuitive sense of natural politeness she stood with crossed 
arms, and a slight smile on her dark and handsome countenance, 
until my companion had ceased, and then addressed us in the 
usual whining tone of supplication, with ' Caballeritos, una 
limosita ! Dios se lo pagara a ustedes ! ' (' Gentlemen, a little 
charity ! God will repay it to you ! ') The gypsy girl was so 
pretty, and her voice so sweet, that I involuntarily put ray hand 
in my pocket. 

' Stop ! "* said the ' Unknown."' ' Do you remember what I told 
you about the Eastern origin of these people.'' You shall see 
I am correct. Come here, my pretty child,"' said he in Moultanee, 
' and tell me where are the rest of your tribe .? "' 



206 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

The girl looked astounded, replied in the same tongiu', but in 
broken language ; when, taking him by the arm, she said, in 
Spanish : ' Come, caballero ; come to one who will be able to 
answer you ; ' and she led the way down amongst the ruins towards 
one of the dens formerly occupied by the wild beasts, and disclosed 
to us a set of beings scarcely less savage. The sombre walls of 
this gloomy abode were illumined by a fire, the smoke from which 
escaped through a deep fissure in the massy roof; whilst the 
flickering flames threw a blood-red glare on the bronzed features 
of a group of children, of two men, and a decrepit old hag, who 
appeared busily engaged in some culinary preparations. 

On our entrance, the scowling glance of the males of the party, 
and a quick motion of the hand towards the folds of the ' faja,"'^ 
caused in m^,at least,any thing but a comfortable sensation; but their 
hostile intentions, if ever entertained, were immediately removed by 
a wave of the hand from our conductress, who, leading my com- 
panion towards the sibyl, whispered something in her ear. The 
old crone appeared incredulous. The 'Unknown' uttered one 
word ; but that word had the effect of magic ; she prostrated her- 
self at his feet, and in an instant, from an object of suspicion he 
became one of worship to the whole family, to whom, on taking 
leave, he made a handsome present, and departed with their united 
blessings, to the astonishment of myself, and what looked very like 
terror in our Spanish guide. 

I was, as the phrase goes, dying with curiosity, and, as soon as 
we mounted our horses, exclaimed, ' Where, in the name of good- 
ness, did you pick up your acquaintance and the language of these 
extraordinary people ? ' ' Some years ago, in Moultan,"' he replied. 
' And by what means do you possess such apparent influence over 
them 't ' But the ' Unknown ' had already said more than he 
perhaps wished on the subject. He drily replied that he had 
more than once owed his life to gipsies, and had reason to know 
them well ; but this was said in a tone which precluded all further 
queries on my part. The subject was never again broached, and 
we returned in silence to the fonda. . . . 

May 1th. — Pouring with rain all day, during which I was 

1 In the folds of the sash is concealed the ' uavaja,' or formidable clasp- 
knife, always worn by the Spaniard. 



BORROWS SPANISH CIRCLE 207 

mostly in the society of the ' Unknown."* This is a most extra- 
ordinary character, and the more I see of him the more I am 
puzzled. He appears acquainted with everybody and everything, 
but apparently unknown to every one himself. Though his figure 
bespeaks youth — and by his own account his age does not exceed 
thirty — yet the snows of eighty winters could not have whitened 
his locks more completely than they are. But in his dark and 
searching eye there is an almost supernatural penetration and 
lustre, which, were I inclined to superstition, might induce me to 
set down its possessor as a second Melmoth ; and in that 
character he often appears to me during the troubled rest I 
sometimes obtain through the medium of the great soother, 
' laudanum.' 

The next most interesting figure in the Borrow 
gallery of this period is Don Luis de Usdz y Rio, who 
was a good friend to Borrow during the whole of his 
sojourn in Spain. It was he who translated Borrow's 
appeal to the Spanish Prime Minister to be permitted 
to distribute Scio's New Testament. He watched over 
Borrow with brotherly solicitude, and wrote him more 
than one excellent letter, of which the two following 
from my Borrow Papers, the last written at the close 
of the Spanish period, are the most interesting : 



To Mr. George Borrow 
{Translated from the Spanish) 

Piazza di Spagna 47, Rome, 7 April 1838. 
Dear Friend, — I received your letter, and thank you for the 
same. I know the works under the name of ' Boz,' about which 
you write, and also the Memoirs of the Pickwick Club, and although 
they seemed to me good, I have failed to appreciate properly their 
qualities, because much of the dramatic style and dialogue in the 
same are very difficult for those who know English merely from 
books. I made here a better acquaintance than that of Mezzo- 



208 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

fanti (who knows nothing), namely, that of Prof, Michel- Angelo 
Lanci, already well-known on account of his work, La sacra scrit- 
tura illustrata con monumenti fenico-assiri ed egiziajii, etc., etc. 
(The Scriptures, illustrated with Phoenician-Assyrian and Egyp- 
tian monuments), which I am reading at present, and find very 
profound and interesting, and more particularly very original. 
He has written and presented me a book, Esposizionc del veisetti 
del Giobbe intorno al cavallo (Explanation of verses of Job about 
a horse), and in these and other works he proves himself to be a 
great philologist and Oriental scholar. I meet him almost daily, 
and I assure you that he seems to me to know everything he 
treats thoroughly, and not like Gayangos or Calderon, etc., etc. 
His philosophic works have created a great stir here, and they do 
not please much the friars here ; but as here they are not like the 
police barbarians there, they do not forbid it, as they cannot. 
Lanci is well known in Russia and in Germany, and when I bring 
his works there, and you are there and have not read them, you 
will read them and judge for yourself. 

Wishing you well, and always at your service, I remain, always 
yours, Luis de Usoz y Rio. 



To Mr. George Borrow 

{Translated from the Spanish) 

Naples, 28 August 1839. 

Dear Friend, — I received your letter of the 28 July written 
from Sevilla, and I am waiting for that which you promise me 
from Tangier. 

I . am glad that you liked Sevilla, and I am still more glad of 
the successful shipment of the beloved book. In distributing it, 
you are rendering the greatest service that generous foreigners (I 
mean Englishmen) can render to the real freedom and enlighten- 
ment in Spain, and any Spaniard who is at heart a gentleman 
must be grateful for this service to the Society and to its agent. 
In my opinion, if Spain had maintained the customs, character, 
and opinions that it had three centuries ago, it ought to have 
maintained also unity in religious opinions : but that at present 



BORROWS SPANISH CIRCLE 209 

the circumstances have changed, and the moral character and 
the advancement of my unfortunate country would not lose any- 
thing in its purification and progress by (the grant of) religious 
liberty. 

You are saying that I acted very light-mindedly in judging 
Mezzofanti without speaking to him. You know that the other 
time when I was in Italy I had dealings and spoke with 
him, and that I said to you that he had a great facility 
for speaking languages, but that otherwise he was no good. 
Because I have seen him several times in the Papal chapels with a 
certain air of an ass and certain grimaces of a blockhead that 
cannot happen to a man of talent. I am told, moreover, that he 
is a spy, and that for that reason he was given the hat. I know, 
moreover, that he has not written anything at all. For that 
reason I do not wish to take the trouble of seeing him. 

As regards Lanci, I am not saying anything except that I am 
waiting until you have read his work without passion, and that if 
my books have arrived at Madrid, you can ask my brother in 
Santiago. 

You are judging of him and of Pahlin in the way you reproach 
me with judging Mezzofanti; I thank you, and I wish for the 
dedication Gabricote ; and I also wish for your return to Madrid, 
so that in going to Toledo you would get a copy of Aristophanes 
with the order that will be given to you by my brother, who has 
got it. 

If for the Gabricote or other work you require my clumsy pen, 
write to Florence and send me a rough copy of what is to be done, 
in English or in Spanish, and I will supply the finished work. 
From Florence I intend to go to London, and I should be obliged 
if you would give me letters and instructions that would be of use 
to me in literary matters, but you must know that my want of 
knowledge of speaking English makes it necessary that the 
Englishmen who speak to me should know Spanish, French, or 
Italian. 

As regards robberies, of which you accuse Southern people, 
from the literatures of the North, do you think that the robberies 
committed by the Northerners from the Southern literature would 
be left behind ? Erunt vitia donee homines. — Always yours, 

Eleutheros. 



210 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Yet another acquaintance of these Spanish days 
was Baron Taylor — Isidore Justin Severin Taylor, 
to give him his full name — who had a career of 
wandering achievement, with Government pay, that 
must have appealed to Borrow. Although his father 
was an Englishman he became a naturalised French- 
man, and he was for a time in the service of the 
French Government as Director of the Theatre 
Fran9ais, when he had no little share in the pro- 
duction of the dramas of Victor Hugo and Dumas. 
Later he was instrumental in bringing the Luxor 
obelisk from Egypt to Paris. He wrote books upon 
his travels in Spain, Portugal and Morocco.^ He 
wandered all over Europe in search of art treasures 
for the French Government, and may very well have 
met Borrow again and again. Borrow tells us that 
he had met Taylor in France, in Russia, and in 
Ireland, before he met him in Andalusia, collecting 
pictures for the French Government. Borrow's de- 
scription of their meetings is inimitable : — 

Whenever he descries me, whether in the street or the desert, 
the brilliant hall or amongst Bedouin haimas, at Novogorod or 
Stambul, he flings up his arms and exclaims, "O del! I have 
again the felicity of seeing my cherished and most respectable 
Borrow." ^ 

The last and most distinguished of Borrow's col- 
leagues while in Spain was George Villiers, fourth Earl 
of Clarendon, whom we judge to have been in private 
life one of the most lovable men of his epoch. George 
Villiers was born in London in 1800, and was the 

1 His principal work was Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l' ancienne 
France. 

' The Bible in Spain, ch. xv. 



BORROWS SPANISH CIRCLE 211 

grandson of the first Earl, Thomas Villiers, who received 






IN SPAIN. 




k 



I I, Q "^ 




A' 



^ , ^ 



A LETTER FROM SIR GEORGE VILLIERS, AFTERWARDS EARL OF 
CLARENDON, BRITISH MINISTER TO SPAIN, TO GEORGE BORROW 

his title when holding office in Lord North's admini- 
stration, but is best known from his association in 
diplomacy with Frederick the Great. His grandson 



212 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

was born, as it were, into diplomacy, and at twenty 
years of age was an attache to the British Embassy in 
St. Petersburg. Later he was associated with Sir 
John Bowring in negotiating a commercial treaty with 
France. In August 1833 he was sent as British 
Minister — ' envoy extraordinary ' he was called — to 
Madrid, and he had been two years in that seething- 
pot of Spanish affairs, with Christinos and Carlists at 
one another's throats, when Borrow arrived in the 
Peninsula. His influence was the greater with a suc- 
cession of Spanish Prime Ministers in that in 1838 he 
had been largely instrumental in negotiating the quad- 
ruple alliance between England, France, Spain, and 
Portugal. In March 1839 — exactly a year before 
Borrow took his departure — he resigned his position at 
Madrid, having then for some months exchanged the 
title of Sir George Villiers for that of Earl of Claren- 
don through the death of his uncle ;^ Borrow thereafter 
having to launch his various complaints and grievances 
at his successor, Mr. — afterwards Sir George — Jerning- 
ham, who, it has been noted, had his home in Nor- 
folk, at Costessey, four miles from Norwich. Villiers 
returned to England with a great reputation, although 
his Spanish policy was attacked in the House of Lords. 
In that same year, 1839, he joined Lord Melbourne's 
administration as Lord Privy Seal, O'Connell at the 
time declaring that he ought to be made Lord- 
Lieutenant of Ireland, so sympathetic was he towards 
concession and conciliation in that then feverishly 
excited country. This office actually came to him in 
1847, and he was Lord- Lieutenant through that dark 
period of Ireland's history, including the Famine, the 

^ Many interesting letters from Villiers will be found in Memoirs and 
Memories, by his niece, Mrs. C. W. Earle, 1911. 



4: 



BORROWS SPANISH CIRCLE 213 

Young Ireland rebellion, and the Smith O'Brien rising. 
He pleased no one in Ireland. No English statesman 
could ever have done so under such ideals of govern- 
ment as England would have tolerated then, and for 
long years afterwards. The Whigs defended him, 
the Tories abused him, in their respective organs. 
He left Ireland in 1852 and was more than once men- 
tioned as possible Prime Minister in the ensuing years. 
He was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Lord 
Aberdeen's Administration during the Crimean War, 
and he held the same office under Lord Palmerston, 
again under Earl Russell in 1865, and under Mr. Glad- 
stone in 18G8. He might easily have become Prime 
Minister. Greville in his JDlary writes of Prince 
Albert's desire that he should succeed Lord John 
Russell, but Clarendon said that no power on earth 
would make him take that position. He said he could 
not speak, and had not had parliamentary experience 
enough. He died in 1870, leaving a reputation as a 
skilful diplomatist and a disinterested politician, if not 
that of a great statesman. He had twice refused 
the Governor- Generalship of India, and three times a 
marquisate. 

Sir George Villiers seems to have been very 
courteous to Borrow during the whole of the time they 
were together in Spain. It would have been easy for 
him to have been quite otherwise. Borrow's Bible 
mission synchronised with a very delicate diplomatic 
mission of his own, and in a measure clashed with it. 
The government of Spain was at the time fighting 
the ultra-clericals. Physical and moral strife were 
rife in the land. Neither Royalists nor Carlists could 
be expected to sympathise with Borrow's schemes, 
which were fundamentally to attack their church. But 



214 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Villiers was at all times friendly, and, as far as he 
could be, helpful. Borrow seems to have had ready 
access to him, and he answered his many letters. 
He gave Borrow an opportunity of an interview with 
the formidable Prime Minister Mendizabal, and he 
interviewed another minister and persuaded him to 
permit Borrow to print and circulate his Bibles. He 
intervened successfully to release Borrow from his 
Madrid prison. But Villiers could not have had any 
sympathy with Borrow other than as a British subject 
to be protected on the Roman citizen principle. We 
do not suppose that when The Bible in Spain appeared 
he was one of those who were captivated by its extra- 
ordinary qualities. When Borrow crossed his path in 
later life he received no special consideration, such 
as would be given very promptly in our day by a 
Cabinet minister to a man of letters of like distinction. 
We find him on one occasion writing to the ex-minister, 
now Lord Clarendon, asking his help for a consulship. 
Clarendon replied kindly enough, but sheltered himself 
behind the statement that the Prime Minister was 
overwhelmed with applications for patronage. Yet 
Clarendon, who held many high offices in the following 
years, might have helped if he had cared to do so. 
Some years later — in 1847 — there was further corres- 
pondence when Borrow desired to become a Magistrate 
of Suffolk. Here again Clarendon wrote three courteous 
letters, and appears to have done his best in an 
unenthusiastic way. But nothing came of it all. 



CHAPTER XX 

MARY BORROW 

Among the many Borrow manuscripts in my possession 
I find a page of unusual pathos. It is the inscription 
that Borrow wrote for his wife's tomb, and it is in the 
tremulous handwriting of a man weighed down by the 
one incomparable tragedy of life's pilgrimage : 

Sacred to the Memory of Mary Borrow, 
the Beloved and Affectionate Wife of 
George Borrow, Esquire, who departed 
this Life on the 30th Jan, I869. 

George Borrow. 

The death of his wife saddened Borrow, and assisted to 
transform him into the unamiable creature of Norfolk 
tradition. But it is well to bear in mind, when we are 
considering Borrow on his domestic and personal side, 
that he was unquestionably a good and devoted husband 
throughout his married life of twenty-nine years. It 
was in the year 1832 that Borrow and his wife first 
met. He was twenty-nine ; she was a widow of thirty- 
six. She was undeniably very intelligent, and was 
keenly sympathetic to the young vagabond of wonder- 
ful adventures on the highways of England, now so 
ambitious for future adventure in distant lands. Her 
maiden name was Mary Skepper. She was one of the 
two children of Edmund Skepper and his wife Anne, 

215 



216 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

who lived at Oulton Hall in Suffolk, whither they had 
removed from Beceles in 1805. Mary's brother in- 
herited the Oulton Hall estate of three hundred acres, 
and she had a mortgage the interest of which yielded 
£450 per annum. In July 1817 Mary married, at Oul- 
ton Church, Henry Clarke,^ a lieutenant in the Navy, 
who died eight months later of consumption. Two 
months after his death their child Henrietta Mary, the 
' Hen ' who was Sorrow's life companion, was born. 
There is a letter among my Borrow Papers addressed 
to the widow by her husband's father at this time. It 
is dated 17th June 1818, and runs as follows : 

I read your very kind, affectionate, and respectful Letter of 
the 15th Inst, with Feelings of Satisfaction and thankfulness — 
thankful that God has mercifully given you so pleasing a Pledge 
of the Love of my late dear, but lamented son, and I most sincerely 
hope and trust that dear little Henrietta will live to be the Joy 
and Consolation of your Life : and satisfyed I am that you are 
what I always esteemed you to be, one of the best of Women ; God 

* All I know of Henry Clarke is contained in two little documents in my 
Borrow Papers which run as follows : 

'These are to Certify the Principal Officers and Commissioners of H.M. 
Navy that Mr. Henry Clarke has Served as Midshipman on board H.M. Ship 
Salvador del Mundo under my Command from the 23 September 1810 to 
the date hereof, during which time he behaved with Diligence, Sobriety, and 
Attention, and was always obedient to Command. 

Given under my Hand on board the 
Salvador del Mundo the 4 April 
1811. 

James Nash, Captain,' 
'These are to Certify the Principal Officers and Commissioners of H.M. 
Navy that Mr. Henry Clarke has Served as Midshipman on board H.M. Ship 
Tisiphone under my Command from the 20th of June 1813 to the date hereof, 
during which time he behaved with Diligence, Sobriety, and Attention, and 
was always obedient to Command. 

Given under my Hand on board the 
Tisiphone in the Needles passage 
this 30th day of November 1813. 

E. HoDDEE, Captain.' 



MARY BORROW 217 

grant ! that you may be, as I am sure you deserve to be one of the 
happiest — His Ways of Providence are past finding out ; to you 
— they seem indeed to have been truly afflictive : but we cannot 
possibly say that they are really so ; we cannot doubt His Wisdom 
nor ought we to distrust His Goodness, let us avow, then, where 
we have not the Power of fathoming — viz. the dispensations of 
God ; in His good time He will show us, perhaps, that every pain- 
ful Event which has happened was abundantly for the best — I am 
truly glad to hear that you and the sweet Babe, my little grand 
Daughter, are doing so well, and I hope I shall have the pleasure 
shortly of seeing you either at Oulton or Sisland. I am sorry to 
add that neither Poor L. nor myself are well. — Louisa and my 
Family join me in kind love to you, and in best regards to your 
worthy Father, Mother, and Brother. 

Mary Skepper was certainly a bright, intelligent girl, 
as I gather from a manuscript poem before me written to 
a friend on the eve of leaving school. As a widow, living 
at first with her parents at Oulton Hall, and later with 
her little daughter in the neighbouring cottage, she 
would seem to have busied herself with all kinds of 
philanthropies, and she was clearly in sympathy with 
the religious enthusiasms of certain neighbouring 
families of Evangelical persuasion, particularly the 
Gurneys and the Cunninghams. The Rev. Francis 
Cunningham was Rector of Pakefield, near Lowestoft, 
from 1814 to 1830. He married Richenda, a sister of 
the distinguished Joseph John Gurney and of Elizabeth 
Fry, in 1816. In 1830 he became Vicar of St. 
Margaret's, Lowestoft. His brother, John William 
Cunningham, was Vicar of Harrow, and married a 
Verney of the famous Buckinghamshire family. This 
John William Cunningham was a great light of the 
Evangelical Churches of his time, and was for many 
years editor of The Chiistian Observer. His daughter 
Mary Richenda married Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, 



218 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

the well-known judge, and the brother of Sir Leslie 
Stephen. But to return to Francis Cunningham, whose 
acquaintance with Borrow was brought about through 
Mrs. Clarke. Cunningham was a great supporter of the 
British and Foreign Bible Society, and was the founder 
of the Paris branch. It was speedily revealed to him 
that Borrow's linguistic abilities could be utilised by 
the Society, and he secured the co-operation of his 
brother-in-law, Joseph John Gurney, in an effort to 
find Borrow work in connection with the Society. 
There is a letter of Borrow's to Mrs. Clarke of this 
period in my Borrow Papers which my readers will 
already have read.^ 

We do not meet Mary Clarke again until 1834, 
when we find a letter from her to Borrow addressed to 
St. Petersburg, in which she notifies to him that he 
has been ' mentioned at many of the Bible Meetings 
this year,' adding that 'dear Mr. Cunningham' had 
spoken so nicely of him at an Oulton gathering. ' As 
I am not afraid of making you proud,' she continues. 
' I will tell you one of his remarks. He mentioned 
you as one of the most extraordinary and interesting 
individuals of the present day.' Henceforth clearly 
Mary Clarke corresponded regularly with Borrow, and 
one or two extracts from her letters are given by Dr. 
Knapp. Joseph Jowett of the Bible Society forwarded 
Borrow's letters from Russia to Cunningham, who 
handed them to Mrs. Clarke and her parents. 
Borrow had proposed to continue his mission by 
leaving Russia for China, but this Mary Clarke 
opposed : 

I must tell you that your letter chilled me when I read your 
^ Vide supra, p. 168. 



MARY BORROW 219 

intention of going as a Missionary or Agent, with tlie Manchu 
Scriptures in your hand, to the Tartars, that land of incalculable 
dangers.^ 

In 1835 Borrow was back in England at Norwich 
with his mother, and on a visit to Mary Clarke and the 
Skeppers at Oulton. Mrs. Skepper died just before his 
arrival in England — that is, in September 1835 — while 
her husband died in February 1836. Mary Clarke's 
only brother died in the following year." 

Thus we see Mary Clarke, aged about forty, left to 
fight the world with her daughter, aged twenty-three, 
and not only to fight the world but her own family, 
particularly her brother's widow, owing to certain 
ambiguities in her father's will which are given forth in 
dreary detail in Dr. Knapp's Life.^ It was these legal 

* Knapp's Life, vol. i. 189. 

^ The tombs in Oulton Churchyard bear the following inscriptions : 

(1) Beneath this stone are interred in the same grave the Mortal Remains 

of Edmund Skepper, who died Febry. 5th, 1836, aged 69. Also 
Ann Skepper, his wife, who died Sept. 15th, 1836, aged 62. 

(2) Beneath this stone are interred the Mortal Remains of Breame 

Skepper, who died May 22nd, 1837, aged 42, leaving a wife and 
six children to lament his severe loss. 

(3) Sacred to the Memory of Lieut, Henry Clarke of His Maj.'s Royal 

Navy, who departed this life on the 21st of March 1818, aged 25 
years, leaving a firmly attached widow and an infant daughter to 
lament his irreparable loss. 

A further tomb commemorates the mother of George Borrow, whose 
epitaph is given elsewhere. 

^ The following document in Henrietta's handwriting is among my 
Borrow Papers : 

' When my Grandfather died he owed a mortgage of £5000 on the Oulton 
Hall estate — to a Mrs. Purdy. 

' At my Grandfather's death my Mother applied to her Brother for the 
money left to her and also the money left — beside the money owed to her 
daughter which is also mentioned in the Will. She was refused both, and 
told moreover that neither the money nor the interest would be paid to her. 

' My Mother and I were living at the Cottage since the funeral of my 
Grandfather — the Skeppers removed to the Hall. The Estate was to be sold 
— and my Mother and myself were to be paid. 



220 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

quarrels that led Mary Clarke and her daughter to set 
sail for Spain, where Mary had had the indefatigable and 
sympathetic correspondent during the previous year of 
trouble. Borrow and Mary Clarke met, as we have 
seen, at Seville and there, at a later period, they 
became ' engaged/ Mrs. Clarke and her daughter 
Henrietta sailed for Spain in the Royal Tar, leaving 
London for Cadiz in June 1839. Much keen corre- 
spondence between Borrow and Mrs. Clarke had passed 
before the final decision to visit Spain. His mother 
was one of the few people who knew of Mrs. Clarke's 
journey to Seville, and must have understood, as 
mothers do, what was pending, although her son did 
not. When the engagement is announced to her — in 
November 1839 — she writes to Mary Clarke a kindly, 
affectionate letter : 

I shall now resign him to your care, and may you love and 
cherish him as much as I have done, I hope and trust that each 
will try to make the other happy. 

There is no reason whatever to accept Dr. Knapp's 
suggestion,^ strange as coming from so pronounced a 
hero-worshipper, that Borrow married for money. And 
this because he had said in one of his letters, ' It is 
better to suffer the halter than the yoke,' the kind of 

'My Mother mentioned this to her solicitor, who hastened hack to 
Norwich and got £5000 — which he carried to the old lady, Mrs. Purdy, next 
day and paid off the mortgage. My Mother then was mortgagee in posses- 
sion — after which she let the place for what she could get — this accounts for 
the whole affair and the whole confusion. 

' My Mother was a Widow at this time and remained so for some time 
after — consequently all transactions took place with her and not with Mr. 
Borrow— she being afterwards married to Mr. Borrow without a settlement. 

' After this, in 1844, the place was again put up by public auction and 
bought in by Mr. Borrow and my Mother.' 

^ Knapp's Life, vol. i. pp. 330, 331. 



MARY BORROW 221 

thing that a man might easily say on the eve of making 
a proposal which he was not sure would be accepted. 
Nor can Dr. Knapp's further discovery of a casual 
remark of Borrow's — ' marriage is by far the best way 
of getting possession of an estate ' — be counted as con- 
clusive. That Borrow was all his life devoted to his 
wife I think is proved by his many letters to her that 
are given in this volume, letters, however, which Dr. 
Knapp had not seen. Borrow's further tribute to his 
wife and stepdaughter in Wild Wales is well known : 

Of my wife I will merely say that she is a perfect paragon of 
wives, can make puddings and sweets and treacle posset, and is 
the best woman of business in Eastern Anglia. Of ray step- 
daughter — for such she is, though I generally call her daughter, 
and with good reason, seeing that she has always shown herself a 
daughter to me — that she has all kinds of good qualities, and 
several accomplishments, knowing something of conchology, more 
of botany, drawing capitally in the Dutch style, and playing 
remarkably well on the guitar — not the trumpery German thing 
so called, but the real Spanish guitar. 

Borrow belonged to the type of men who would 
never marry did not some woman mercifully take them 
in hand, Mrs. Clarke, when she set out for Spain, 
had doubtless determined to marry Borrow. It is 
clear that he had no idea of marrying her. Yet he 
was certainly ' engaged,' as we learn from a letter to 
Mr. Brackenbury, to be given hereafter, when he 
wrote a letter from Seville to Mr. Brandram, dated 
March 18, in which he said: 'I wish very much 
to spend the remaining years of my life in the 
northern parts of China, as I think I have a call to 
those regions. ... I hope yet to die in the cause 
of my Redeemer.' Surely never did man take so 
curious a view of the responsibilities of marriage. 



222 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

He must have known that his proposal would be 
declined — as it was. 

Very soon after the engagement Borrow experi- 
enced his third term of imprisonment in Spain, 
this time, however, only for thirty hours, and all 
because he had asked the Alcalde, or mayor of the 
district in which he lived, for his passport, and had 
quarrelled with his worship over the matter. Borrow 



P««e/ 



18ii_. Mii/riig« •olemniiMi st the/^^^/y^c*4*i5' in tie P»riJi of /^ A^t4, /j^C^t< ^mt/U^ in the Corimj of .^*-/«ifc- 



^ 












fni/&*ua. 









2 Ifa* BMkUibaJ fX^ad^ i 









7 ^ (Mi^ir 



MRS. BORROWS COPY OF HER'MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE. 



gave up the months of this winter of 1839 rather to 
writing his first important book, The Gypsies of Spain ^ 
than to the concerns of the Bible Society. Finally 
Borrow, with Mrs. Clarke and her daughter, sailed 
from Cadiz on the 3rd April 1840, as we have already 
related. He had with him his Jewish servant, Hayim 
Ben Attar, and his Arabian horse, Sidi Habismilk, 
both of which were to astonish the natives of the 
Suffolk broads. The party reached London on 16th 
April and stayed at the Spread Eagle Inn, Gracechurch 
Street. The marriage took place at St. Peter's Church, 
Cornhill, on 23rd April 1840. 

There are only two letters from Mrs. Borrow to her 
husband extant. Dr. Knapp apparently discovered 
none in the Borrow Papers in his possession. The two 
before me were written in the Hereford Square days 



MARY BORROW 223 

between the years 1860 and 1809 — the last year of 
Mrs. Borrow's life. The pair had been married some 
twenty-five years at least, and it is made clear by these 
letters alone that at the end of this period they were 
still a most happily assorted couple. Mrs. Borrow 
must have gone to Brighton for her health on two 
separate occasions, each time accompanied by her 
daughter. Borrow, who had enjoyed many a pleasant 
ramble on his own account, as we shall see — rambles 
which extended as far away as Constantinople — is 
' keeping house ' in Hereford Square, Brompton, the 
while. It will be noted that Mrs. Borrow signed her- 
self ' Carreta,' the pet name that her husband always 
gave her. Dr. Knapp points out that * carreta ' means 
a Spanish dray-cart, and that ' carita,' * my dear,' was 
probably meant. But, careless as was the famous 
word-master over the spelling of words in the tongues 
that he never really mastered scientifically, he could 
scarcely have made so obvious a blunder as this, and 
there must have been some particular experience in 
the lives of husband and wife that led to the playful 
designation.^ Here are the two letters : 



To George Borrow, Esq. 

Grenville Place, Brighton, Sussex. 

My darling Husband, — I am thankful to say that I arrived 

here quite safe on Saturday, and on Wednesday I hope to see you 

at home. We may not be home before the evening about six 

o'clock, sooner or later, so do not be anxious, as we shall be care- 



^ The following suggestion has, however, been made to me by a friend of 
Henrietta MacOubrey nee Clarke : 

' I think Borrow intended ''Carreta" for "dearest." It is impossible to 
think that he would call his wife a "cart." Perhaps he intended " Carreta " 



224 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

ful. We took tea witli the Edwards at six o'clock the day I 
came ; they are a very kind, nice family. You must take a walk 
when we come home, but remember now we have a young servant, 
and do not leave the house for very long together. The air here 
is very fresh, and much cooler than in London, and I hope after 
the five days' change I shall be benefited, but I wish to come 
home on Wednesday. See to all the doors and windows of a 
night, and let Jane keep up the chain, and lock the back door by 
the hop plant before it gets dark. Our love to Lady Soame. 
— And with our best love to you, believe me, your own 

Carreta. 

Sunday morning, 10 o'clock. 
If I do not hear from you I shall conclude all is well, and you 
may do the same with regard to us. Have the tea ready a little 
before six on Wednesday. Henrietta is wonderfully improved by 
the change, and sends dear and best love to you. 



To George Borrow, Esq. 

33 Grenville Place, Brighton, Sussex. 
Thursday morning. 

My dear Husband, — As it is raining again this morning I 
write a few lines to you. I cannot think that we have quite so 
much rain as you have at Brompton, for I was out twice yesterday, 
an hour in the morning in a Bath chair, and a little walk in the 
evening on the Marine Parade, and I have been out little or much 
every day, and hope I feel a little better. Our dear Henrietta 
likewise says that she feels the better for the air and change. As 
we are here I think we had better remain till Tuesday next, when 
the fortnight will be up, but I fear you feel very lonely. I hope 
you get out when you can, and that you take care of your health. 
I hope Ellen continues to attend to yr. comfort, and that when 
she gives orders to Mrs. Harvey or the Butcher that she shews 

for " Querida." Probably their pronunciation was not Castillian, and they 
spelled the word as they pronounced it. In speaking of her to "Hen." Borrow 
always called her "Mamma." Mrs. MacOubrey took a great fancy to me 
because she said I was like " Mamma." She meant in character, not in person.' 



MARY BORROW 225 

you what they send. I shall want the stair carpets down, and tlie 
drawing-room 7iice — blinds and shutters closed to prevent the sun, 
also bed-i'ooms prepared, with well aired sheets and counterpane 
b?/ next Tuesday. I suppose we shall get to Hereford Square 
perhaps about five o'clock, but I shall write again. You had 
better dine at yr. usual time, and as we shall get a dinner here 
we shall want only tea. 

Henrietta's kindest dear love and mine, remaining yr. true 
and affectionate wife. Carketa. 

There is one letter from Borrow to his wife, written 
from London in 1843, in which he says : 

I have not been particularly well since I wrote last ; indeed, 
the weather has been so horrible that it is enough to depress 
anybody's spirits, and, of course, mine. I did very wrong not to 
bring you when I came, for without you I cannot get on at all. 
Left to myself a gloom comes upon me which I cannot describe.^ 

Assuredly no reader can peruse the following pages 
without recognising the true affection for his wife that 
is transparent in his letters to her. Arthur Dalrymple's 
remark that he had frequently seen Borrow and his 
wife travelling: 

He stalking along with a huge cloak wrapped round him in all 
weathers, and she trudging behind him like an Indian squaw, 
with a carpet bag, or bundle, or small portmanteau in her arms, 
and endeavouring under difficulty to keep up with his enormous 
strides, 

is clearly a travesty. ' JNlrs. Borrow was devoted to her 
husband, and looked after business matters ; and he 
always treated her with exceeding kindness,' is the 
verdict of Miss Elizabeth Jay, who was frequently 
privileged to visit the husband and wife at Oulton. 

* Dr. Knapp : Life, vol. ii. p. 39. 



CHAPTER XXI 

'THE CHILDREN OF THE OPEN AIR' 

Behold George Borrow, then, in a comfortable home 

on the banks of Oulton Broad — a family man. His 

mother — sensible woman — declines her son's invitation 

to live with the newly-married pair. She remains in 

the cottage at Norwich where her husband died. The 

Borrows were married in April 1840, by May they had 

settled at Oulton. It was a pleasantly secluded estate, 

and Borrow 's wife had £450 a year. He had, a month 

before his marriage, written to Mr. Brandram to say 

that he had a work nearly ready for publication, and 

' two others in a state of forwardness.' The title of the 

first of these books he enclosed in his letter. It was 

The Zincali: O?^ an Account of the Gypsies of Spain. 

Mr. Samuel Smiles, in his history of the House of 

Murray — A Publisher and his JF?ie7ids — thus relates 

the circumstances of its publication : — 

In November 1840 a tall, athletic gentleman in black called 
upon Mr. Murray offering a MS. for perusal and publication. . . . 
Mr. Murray could not fail to be taken at first sight with this 
extraordinary man. He had a splendid physique, standing six 
feet two in his stockings, and he had brains as well as muscles, as 
his works sufficiently show. The book now submitted was of 
a very uncommon character, and neither the author nor the 
publisher were very sanguine about its success. Mr. Murray 

226 



*THE CHILDREN OF THE OPEN AIR' 227 

agreed, after perusal, to print and publish 750 copies of The 
Gypsies of' Spain, and divide the profits with the author. 

It was at the suggestion of Richard Ford, then the 
greatest living English authority on Spain, that Mr. 
Murray published the book. It did not really com- 
mence to sell until The Bible in Spain came a year or 
so later to bring the author reputation.^ From Novem- 
ber 1840 to June 1841 only three hundred copies had 
been sold in spite of friendly reviews in some half 
dozen journals, including The Athenceum and The 
Literary Gazette. The first edition, it may be men- 
tioned, contained on its title-page a description of the 
author as ' late agent of the British and Foreign Bible 
Society in Spain.' ^ There is very marked compression in 
the edition now in circulation, and a perusal of the first 
edition reveals many interesting features that deserve 
to be restored for the benefit of the curious. But 
nothing can make The Zincali a great piece of litera- 
ture. It was summarised by the Edinburgh Review at 
the time as *a hotch-potch of the jockey, tramper, philo- 
logist, and missionary.' That description, which was 
not intended to be as flattering as it sounds to-day, 
appears more to apply to The Bible in Spain. But 
The Zincali is too confused, too ill-arranged a book 

* There were 750 copies of the first edition of The Zincali in two vols, in 1841. 
750 of the second edition in 1848, and a third issue of 750 in the same year. 
A fourth edition of 7,500 copies appeared in the cheap Home and Colonial 
Library in 1846, and there was a fifth edition of 1000 copies in 1870. These 
were all the editions published in England during Borrow's lifetime. Dr. 
Knapp traced three American editions during the same period. 

^ The Zincali; or an Acco^mt of the Gypsies of Spain. With an original col- 
lection of their songs and poetry, and a copious dictionary of their language. 
By George Borrow, Late Agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 
Spain. ' For that which is unclean by nature, thou canst entertain no hope ; no 
washing will turn the gypsy white.' — Ferdousi. In two volumes. London: 
John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1841. 



228 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

to rank with Borrow's four great works. There are 
passages in it, indeed, so eloquent, so romantic, that 
no lover of Borrow's writings can afford to neglect 
them. But this was not the book that gypsy-loving 
Borrow, with the temperament of a Romany, should 
have written, or could have written had he not been 
obsessed by the * science ' of his subject. His real 
work in gypsydom was to appear later in Lavengro and 
The Romany Rye. For Borrow was not a man of 
science — a philologist, a folk-lorist of the first order. 

No one, indeed, who had read only The Zincali among 
Borrow's works could see in it any suspicion of the 
writer who was for all time to throw a glamour over the 
gypsy, to make the ' children of the open air ' a verit- 
able cult, to earn for him the title of ' the walking lord 
of gypsy lore,' and to lay the foundations of an admir- 
able succession of books both in fact and fiction — but 
not one as great as his own. The city of Seville, it is 
clear, with sarcastic letters from Bible Society secretaries 
on one side, and some manner of love romance on the 
other, was not so good a place for an author to pro- 
duce a real book as Oulton was to become. Richard 
Ford hit the nail on the head when he said with quite 
wonderful prescience : 

How I wish you had given us more about yourself, instead 
of the extracts from those blunder-headed old Spaniards, who 
knew nothing about gypsies ! I shall give you the rap^ on that, 
and a hint to publish your whole adventures for the last twenty 
years.^ 

Henceforth Borrow was to write about himself and 
to become a great author in consequence. For in 
writing about himself as in Lavengro and The Romany 

* Knapp's Life, vol. i. p. S78. 



( r' 



THE CHILDREN OF THE OPEN AIR' 229 

Rye he was to write exactly as he felt about the 
gypsies, and to throw over them the glamour of his 
own point of view, the view of a man who loved the 
broad higliway and those who sojourned upon it. In 
The Gypsies of Spain we have a conventional estimate 
of the gypsies. ' There can be no doubt that they are 
Imman beings and have immortal souls,' he says, even 
as if he were writing a letter to the Bible Society. All 
his anecdotes about the gypsies are unfavourable to 
them, suggestive only of them as knaves and cheats. 
From these pictures it is a far cry to the creation of 
Jasper Petulengro and Isopel Berners. The most 
noteworthy figure in The Zinccdi is the gypsy soldier of 
Valdepenas, an unholy rascal. ' To lie, to steal, to 
shed human blood ' — these are the most marked 
characteristics with which Borrow endows the gypsies 
of Spain. ' Abject and vile as tliey have ever been, 
the gitanos have nevertheless found admirers in Spain,' 
says the author who came to be popularly recognised 
as the most enthusiastic admirer of the gypsies in Spain 
and elsewhere. Read to-day by the lover of Borrow's 
other books IVie Zincali will be pronounced a readable 
collection of anecdotes, interspersed with much dull 
matter, with here and there a piece of admirable 
writing. But the book would scarcely have lived 
had it not been followed by four works of so fine 
an individuality. Well might Ford ask Borrow for 
more about himself and less of the extracts from 
' blunder-headed old Spaniards.' When Borrow came 
to write about himself he revealed his real kindness 
for the gypsy folk. He gave us Jasper Petulengro 
and the incomparable description of ' the wmd on 
the heath.' He kindled the imagination of men, 
proclaimed the joys of vagabondage in a manner 



230 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

that thrilled many hearts. He had some predecessors 
and many successors, but ' none could then, or can 
ever again,' says the biographer of a later Rye, * see or 
hear of Romanies without thinking of Borrow.'^ In 
her biography of one of these successors in gypsy lore, 
Charles Godfrey Leland, Mrs. Pennell discusses the 
probability that Borrow and Leland met in the British 



^^ ftmuBBian to qbp the Reading-Roorn mU be vrithdrawp 6fitn any person who shall write or moko marks OD vaj port 
of a printed book or raanoiteiipt brloDgiug to the Moseam. 



^^\^.V^ 



B&adirig ami Title of the Work wllrttoO. 






t^^u^^ 








XlJumbor of tin Eeiular'e Scat). 



VolaoiB ct tbt CaUlognc to its pin 



AN APPLICATION FOR A BOOK IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM, 
WITH BORROWS SIGNATURE 

Museum. That is admitted in a letter from Leland to 
Borrow in my possession. To this letter Borrow made 
no reply. It was wrong of him. But he was then — in 
1873 — a prematurely old man, worn out and saddened 
by neglect and a sense of literary failure. For this and 
for the other vagaries of those latter years Borrow will 
not be judged harshly by those who read his story here. 
Nothing could be more courteous than Borrow's one 
letter to Leland, written in the failing handwriting — 
once so excellent — of the last sad decade of his 
life : 

22 Hereford Square, Brompton, Xov. 2, 1871. 
Sir, — I have received your letter and am gratified by the 

^ Mrs. Pennell. See Charles Godfrey Leland : a Biography, hy Elizabeth 
Robins Pennell. 2 vols. 1906. 



'THE CHILDREN OF THE OPEN AIR' 231 

desire you express to make my acquaintance. Whenever you 
please to come I shall be happy to see you. — Yours truly, 

George Borrow.^ 

The meeting did not, through Leland's absence from 
London, then take place. Two years later it was another 
story. The failing powers were more noteworthy. 
Borrow was by this time dead to the world, as the docu- 
ments before me abundantly testify. It is not, there- 
fore, necessary to assume, as Leland's friends have all 
done, that Borrow never replied because he was on the 
eve of publishing a book of his own about the gypsies. 
There seems no reason to assume, as Dr. Knapp does 
and as Leland does, that this was the reason for the 
unanswered letter : 

To George Borrow, Esq. 

Langham Hotel, Portland Place, March ^\st, 1873. 
Deae Sir, — I sincerely trust that the limited extent of our 
acquaintanceship will not cause this note to seem to you too 
presuming. Breviter, I have thrown the results of my observa- 
tions among English gypsies into a very unpretending little 
volume consisting almost entirely of facts gathered from the 
Romany, without any theory. As I owe all my interest in the 
subject to your writings, and as I am sincerely grateful to you for 
the impulse which they gave me, I should like very much to 
dedicate my book to you. Of course if your kindness permits 
1 shall submit the proofs to you, that you may judge whether the 
work deserves the honour. I should have sent you the MS., but 
not long after our meeting at the British Museum I left for Egypt, 
whence I have very recently returned, to find my publisher clamor- 
ous for the promised copy. 

It is not — God knows — a mean and selfish desire to help my 
book by giving it the authority of your name, which induces this 

1 Given in Mrs. Pennell's Leland: a Biography , vol. ii. pp. 1-42-3. The 
letter to which it is a reply is given in Knapp's Borrow, vol. ii. pp. 228-9. 



232 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

request. But I am earnestly desirous for my conscience' sake to 
publish nothing in the Romany which shall not be true and 
sensible, even as all that you have written is true and sensible. 
Therefore, sJiould you take the pains to glance over my proof, I 
should be grateful if you would signify to me any differences of 
opinion should there be ground for any. Dr. A. F. Pott in his 
Zigeuner (vol. ii. p. 224), intimates very decidedly that you took 
the word shastr (Exhastra de Moyses) from Sanskrit and put it 
into Romany ; declaring that it would be very important if 
shaster were Romany. I mention in my book that English 
gypsies call the New Testament (also any MS.) a shaster, and that 
a betting-book on a racecourse is called a shaster ' because it is 
written.' I do not pretend in my book to such deep Romany as 
you have achieved — all that I claim is to have collected certain 
words, facts, phrases, etc., out of the Romany of the roads — 
corrupt as it is — as I have found it to-day. I deal only with the 
gypsy of the Decadence. With renewed apology for intrusion 
should it seem such, I remain, yours very respectfully, 

Charles G. Leland. 

Francis Hindes Groome remarked when reviewing 
Borrow's Word Book in 1874,^ that when The Gypsies 
of Spain yv as published in 1841 'there were not two 
educated men in England who possessed the slightest 
knowledge of Romany. ' In the intervening thirty- three 
years all this was changed. There was an army of 
gypsy scholars or scholar gypsies of whom Leland was 
one, Hindes Groome another, and Professor E. H. 
Palmer a third, to say nothing of many scholars and 
students of Romany in other lands. Not one of them 
seemed when Borrow published his Word Book of the 
Romany to see that he was the only man of genius among 
them. They only saw that he was an inferior philologist 
to them all. And so Borrow, who prided himself on 
things that he could do indifferently quite as much as 

1 The Academy, June 13, 1874. 



*THE CHILDREN OF THE OPEN AIR' 233 

upon things that he could do well, suffered once again, as 
he was so often doomed to suJffer, from the lack of appre- 
ciation which was all in all to him, and his career went 
out in a veritable blizzard. He published nothing after 
his Romano Lavo-Lil appeared in 1874.^ He was then 
indeed a broken and a bitter man, with no further 
interest in life. Dedications of books to him interested 
him not at all. In any other mood, or a few years earlier, 
Leland's book. The English Gypsies,^ would have glad- 
dened his heart. In his preface Leland expresses * the 
highest respect for the labours of Mr. George Borrow in 
this field,' he quotes Borrow continually and with sym- 
pathy, and renders him honour as a philologist, that has 
usually been withheld. ' To Mr. Borrow is due the 
discovery that the word Jockey is of gypsy origin and 
derived from chuckiri, which means a whip,' and he 
credits Borrow with the discovery of the origin of 
' tanner ' for sixpence ; he vindicates him as against Dr. 
A. F. Pott, — a prince among students of gypsydom — of 
being the first to discover that the English gypsies call 
the Bible the Shaster. But there is a wealth of scientific 
detail in Leland's books that is not to be found in 
Borrow's, as also there is in Francis Hindes Groome's 
works. What had Borrow to do with science ? He 
could not even give the word ' Rumani ' its accent, and 
called it 'Romany.' He 'quietly appropriated,' says 
Groome,' Bright's Spanish gypsy words for his own work. 



^ Romano Lavo-Lil : Word Book of the Romany; or, English Gypsy Language. 
By Geoi-ge Borrow. London : John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1874. 

2 Charles Godfrey Lelaud (1824-1903) better known as ' Hans Breit- 
mann ' of the popular ballads, was born in Philadelphia and died in Florence. 
He was always known among his friends as 'The Rye,' in consequence of his 
enthusiasm for the gypsies concerning whom he wrote four books, the best 
known being : The English Gypsies and their Language, by Charles G. Leland : 
Trubner. The Gypsies, by Charles G. Leland : Trubner. 



234 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

mistakes and all, without one word of recognition. I 
think one has the ancient impostor there.' ^ ' His know- 
ledge of the strange history of the gypsies was very 
elementary, of their manners almost more so, and of 
their folk-lore practically nil,' says Groome elsewhere.^ 
Yet Mr. Hindes Groome readily acknowledges that 
Borrow is above all writers on the gypsies. * He com- 
municates a subtle insight into gypsydom ' — that is the 
very essence of the matter.^ Controversy will continue 
in the future as in the present as to whether the 
gypsies are all that Borrow thought them. Perhaps 
' corruption has crept in among them ' as it did with 
the prize-fighters. They have intermarried with the 
gorgios, thrown over their ancient customs, lost all their 
picturesque qualities, it may be. But Borrow has 
preserved in literature for all time, as not one of the 
philologists and folk-lore students has done, a remarkable 
type of people. But this is not to be found in his first 
original work, The Zincali, nor in his last. The Romano 
Lavo-Lil. This glamour is to be found in havengro and 
T^he Romany Rye, to which books we shall come in due 
course. Here we need only refer to the fact that Borrow 
had loved the gypsies all his life — from his boyish meet- 
ing with Petulengro until in advancing years the proto- 
type of that wonderful creation of his imagination — for 

^ See Groome's In Gipsy Tents (W. P. Nimmo, 1880), and Gipsy Folk- 
Tales (Hurst & Blackett, 1899). Francis Hindes Groome (1851-1902), whom 
it was my privilege to know, was the son of Archdeacon Groome, the friend 
of Edward FitzGerald. He was the greatest English authority of his time on 
gypsy language and folk-lore. He celebrated his father's friendship with the 
paraphraser of Omar Khayyam in Two Suffolk Friends, 1895, and wrote a good 
novel of gypsydom in Kriegspicl, 189G. He also edited an edition oiLavengro 
(Methuen), 1901. 

2 Groome to Leland in Charles Godfrey Leland : a Biography, by E. R. 
Pennell, vol. ii. p. 141. 

^ Introduction to Lavengro (Methuen), 1901. 



♦THE CHILDREN OF THE OPEN AIR' 235 

this the Petulengro of Lavengro undoubtedly was — 
came to visit him at Oulton. Well might Leland 
call him * the Nestor of Gypsydom.' 

We find the following letter to Dr. Bowring accom- 
panying a copy of The Z'mcaU : 



To Dr. John Bowring. 

58 Jermyn Street, St. James, April 14, 1841. 
My dear Sir, — I have sent you a copy of my work by the 
mail. If you could contrive to notice it some way or other I 
should feel much obliged. Murray has already sent copies to all 
the journals. It is needless to tell you that despatch in these 
matters is very important, the first blow is everything. Lord 
Clarendon is out of town. So I must send him his presentation 
copy through Murray, and then write to him. I am very unwell, 
and must go home. My address is George Borrow, Oulton Hall, 
Oulton, Lowestoft, Suffolk. Your obedient servant, 

George Borrow. 

Two years later we find Borrow writing to an 
unknown correspondent upon a phase of folk-lore : 

Oulton, Lowestoft, Suffolk, August 11, 1843. 

My dear Sir, — Many thanks for your interesting and kind 
letter in which you do me the honour to ask my opinion respecting 
the pedigree of your island goblin, le feu follet Belenger; that 
opinion I cheerfully give with a pi-emise that it is only an opinion; 
in hunting for the etymons of these fairy names we can scarcely 
expect to arrive at anything like certainty. 

I suppose you are aware that the name of Bilenger or 
Billinger is of occasional though by no means of frequent occur- 
rence both in England and France. I have seen it ; you have 
heard of Billings-gate and of Billingham, the unfortunate assassin 
of poor Percival, — all modifications of the same root ; Belingart, 
Bilings home or Billing ston. But what is Billin-ger .? Clearly 
that which is connected in some way or other with Billing. You 



I 

236 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

will find ger^ or something like it, in most European tongues — 
Boulan^cr, horolo^er, taR'^r, waU*<?r, ba^er, hx&wer, begg-ar. In 
Welsh it is of frequent occurrence in the shape of ur or gwr — 
henwr (an el<i^r), herzcr (a prowZe?) ; in Russian the ger, gwr, ur, 
er, appears in the shape of ik or Ic — sapojgniA:, a shoemaArer, 
ChinobuiA;, a man possessed of rank. The root of all these, as 
well as of or in senator, victor, etc., is the Sanscrit her or kir^ 
which means lord, master, maker, doer, possessor of something or 
connected with something. 

We want now to come at the meaning of Beling or Billing, 
which probably means some action, or some moral or personal 
attribute ; Bolvile in Anglo-Saxon means honest, Danish BoUig ; 
Wallen, in German, to wanken or move restlessly about ; Baylan, 
in Spanish, to dance (Ball .? Ballet ?), connected with which are to 
whirl, to fling, and possibly Belinger therefore may mean a Billiger 
or honest fellow, or it may mean a Walter^e^-, a \s\\\x\enger ^ a 
flinger, or something connected with restless motion. 

Allow me to draw your attention to the word ' Will ' in the 
English word will-o-the-wisp ; it must not be supposed that this 
Will is the abbreviation of William ; it is pure Danish, ' Vild' — 
pronounced will, — and signifies wild ; Vilden Visk, the wild or 
moving wisp. I can adduce another instance of the corruption 
of the Danish vild into will : the rustics of this part of England 
are in the habit of saying ' they are led will' (vild or wild) when 
from intoxication or some other cause they are bewildered at 
night and cannot find their way home. This expression is clearly 
from the old Norse or Danish. I am not at all certain that ' BiP 
in Bilinger may not be this same will or vild, and that the word 
may not be a corruption of vilden, old or elder, wild or flying 
fire. It has likewise occurred to me that Bilinger may be derived 
from ' Volundr,"* the worship of the blacksmith or Northern Vulcan. 
Your obedient servant, Georgk Borrow, 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE BIBLE IN SPAIN 

In an admirable appreciation of our author, the one 
in which he gives the oft-quoted eulogy concerning 
him as 'the delightful, the bewitching, the never- 
sufficiently-to-be-praised George Borrow,' Mr. Birrell 
records the solace that may be found by small boys 
in the ambiguities of a title-page, or at least might 
have been found in it in his youth and in mine. 
In those days in certain Puritan circles a very strong 
line was drawn between what was known as Sunday 
reading, and reading that might be permitted on week- 
days. The Sunday book must have a religious 
flavour. There were magazines with that particular 
flavour, every story in them having a pious moral 
withal. Very closely watched and scrutinised was the 
reading of young people in those days and in those 
circles. Mr. Birrell, doubtless, speaks from autobio- 
graphical memories when he tells us of a small boy 
with whose friends The Bible in Spain passed muster 
on the strength of its title-page. For JNIr. Birrell is 
the son of a venerated Nonconformist minister ; and 
perhaps he, or at least those who were of his household, 
had this religious idiosyncrasy. It may be that the 
distinction which pervaded the evangelical circles of 
Mr. BirrelFs youth as to what were Sunday books, as 

237 



238 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

distinct from books to be read on week-days, has dis- 
appeared. In any case think of the advantage of the 
boy of that generation who was able to handle a book 
with so unexceptionable a title as The Bible in Spain. 
His elders would succumb at once, particularly if the 
boy had the good sense to call their attention to the 
sub-title — ' The Journeys, Adventures, and Imprison- 
ments of an Englishman in an Attempt to Circulate 
the Scriptures in the Peninsula.' Nothing could be 
said by the most devout of seniors against so prepos- 
sessing a title-page.^ But what of the boy who had 
thus passed the censorship ? What a revelation of 
adventure was open to him ! Perhaps he would skip 
the 'preachy' parts in which Borrow was doubtless 
sincere, although the sincerity has so uncertain a ring 
to-day. Here are five passages, for example, which do 
not seem to belong to the book : 

In whatever part of the world I, a poor wanderer in the 
Gospel's cause, may chance to be 

very possibly the fate of St. Stephen might overtake me ; but 
does the man deserve the name of a follower of Christ who would 
shrink from danger of any kind in the cause of Him whom he 
calls his Master ? ' He who loses his life for my sake shall find it,' 
are words which the Lord Himself uttered. These words were 
fraught with consolation to me, as they doubtless are to every one 
engaged in propagating the Gospel, in sincerity of heart, in 
savage and barbarian lands. 

Unhappy land ! not until the pure light of the Gospel has 
illumined thee, wilt thou learn that the greatest of all gifts is 
charity ! 

^ Yet one critic of Borrow — Jane H. Fiudlater, in the Cornhill Magazine, 
November 1899 — actually says that ' The Bible in Spain was perhaps the 
most ill-advised title that a well-written book ever laboured under, giving, 
as it does, the idea that the book is a prolonged tract.' 



'THE BIBLE IN SPAIN' 239 

and I thought that to convey the Gospel to a place so wild and 
remote might perhaps be considered an acceptable pilgrimage in 
the eyes of my Maker. True it is that but one copy remained 
of those which I had brought with me on this last journey ; but 
this reflection, far from discouraging me in my projected enter- 
prise, produced the contrary effect, as I called to mind that, ever 
since the Lord revealed Himself to man, it has seemed good to 
Him to accomplish the greatest ends by apparently the most in- 
sufficient means; and I reflected that this one copy might serve as 
an instrument for more good than the four thousand nine hundred 
and ninety-nine copies of the edition of Madrid. 

I shall not detain the course of my narrative with reflections 
as to the state of a Church which, though it pretends to be 
founded on scripture, would yet keep the light of scripture from all 
mankind, if possible. But Rome is fully aware that she is not a 
Christian Church, and having no desire to become so, she acts 
prudently in keeping from the eyes of her followers the page 
which would reveal to them the truths of Christianity. 

All this does not ring quite true, and in any case it is 
too much on the lines of 'Sunday reading 'to please 
the small boy, who must, however, have found a 
thousand things in that volume that were to his taste 
— some of the wildest adventures, hairbreadth escapes, 
extraordinary meetings again and again with unique 
people — with Benedict Mol, for example, who was 
always seeking for treasure. Gypsies, bull-fighters, 
quaint and queer characters of every kind, come before 
us in rapid succession. Rarely, surely, have so many 
adventures been crowded into the same number of 
pages. Only when Borrow remembers, as he has to do 
occasionally, that he is an agent of the Bible Society 
does the book lose its vigour and its charm. We have 
already pointed out that the foundations of the volume 
were contained in certain letters written by Borrow dur- 



240 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

ing his five years in Spain to the secretaries of the Bible 
Society in London. The recent pubHcation of these 
letters has revealed to us Borrow's methods. When 
he had settled down at Oulton he took down his note- 
books, one of which is before me, but finding this was 
not sufficient, he asked the Bible Society for the loan of 
his letters to them.^ Other letters that he hoped to 
use were not forthcoming, as the following note from 
Miss Gurney to Mrs. Borrow indicates : 

To Mrs. George Borrow 

Earlham, I2th June 1840. 
Dear Miis, Borrow, — I am sorry I cannot find any of Mr. 
Borrow's letters from Spain. I don't think we ever had any, but 

1 Borrow had really written a great deal of the book in Spain. The 
•^ note-book' contained many of his adventures, and moreover on August 
20, 1836, the Athetasuni published two long letters from him under the 
title of ' The Gypsies in Russia and in Spain,' opening with the following 
preliminary announcement : 

We have been obligingly favoured with the following extracts from 
letters of an intelligent gentleman, whose literary labours, the least 
important of his life, we not long since highly praised, but whose name 
we are not at liberty, on this occasion, to make public. They contain 
some curious and interesting facts relating to the condition of this 
peculiar people in very distant countries. 

The first letter is dated September 28, 1835, and gives an account of his 
experiences with the gypsies in Russia. The whole of this account he incor- 
porated in The Gypsies of Spain. Following this there are two columns, 
dated Madrid, July 19, 1836, in which he gives an account of the gypsies 
in Spain. All the episodes that he relates he incorporated in The Bible in 
Spai7i. The two letters so plainly indicate that all the time Borrow was in 
Spain his mind was more filled with the subject of the gypsies than with any 
other question. He did his work well for the Bible Society no doubt, and 
gave them their money's worth, but there is a humorous note in the fact that 
Borrow should have utilised his position as a missionary — for so we must 
count him — to make himself so thoroughly acquainted with gypsy folklore 
and gypsy songs and dances as these two fragments by an ' intelligent gentle- 
man' imply. It is not strange that under the circumstances Borrow did not 
wish that his name should be made public. 



'THE BIBLE IN SPAIN' 241 

my brother is from home and I therefore cannot inquire of him. I 
send you the only two I can find. I am very glad he is going to 
publish his travels, which I have no doubt will be very interesting. 
It must be a pleasant object to assist him by copying the manu- 
scripts. If I should visit Lowestoft this summer I shall hope to 
see you, but I have no immediate prospect of doing so. With 
kind regards to all your party, I am, Dear Mrs. Borrow, Yours 
sincerely, C. Gurney.^ 

The Bible Society applied to in the same manner 
lent Borrow all his letters to that organisation and its 
secretaries. Not all were returned. Many came to 
Dr. Knapp when he purchased the half of the Borrow 
papers that were sold after Borrow's death ; the re- 
mainder are in my possession. It is a nice point, 
seventy years after they were written, as to whom they 
belong. In any case the Bible Society must have kept 
copies of everything, for when, in 1911, they came to 
publish the Letter's"^ the collection was sufficiently 
complete. That publication revealed some interesting 
sidelights. It proved on the one hand that Borrow 
had drawn more upon his diaries than upon his letters, 
although he frequently reproduced fragments of his 
diaries in his letters. It revealed further the extra- 
ordinary frankness with which Borrow wrote to his 
employers. But the main point is in the discovery 
revealed to us that Borrow was not an artist in his 
letters. Borrow was never a good letter writer, 
although I think that many of the letters that appear 

* This was Miss Catherine Gurney, who was born in 1776^ in Magdalen 
Street, Norwich, and died at Lowestoft in 1850, aged seventy-five. She twice 
presided over the Earlham home. The brother referred to was Joseph John 
Gurney. 

2 Letters of George Borrow to the British and Foreign Bible Society. 
Published by direction of the Committee. Edited by T. H. Uarlow. 
Hodder and Stoughtou, 1911. 

a 



242 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

for the first time in these pages will prove that his letters 
are very interesting as contributions to biography. If 
some of the letters that helped to make up The Bible 
in Spain are interesting, it is because in them Borrow 
incorporated considerable fragments of anecdote and 
adventure from his note-books. It is quite a mistake 
to assume, as does Dr. Knapp, that the ' Rev. and Dear 
Sir ' at the head of a letter was the only variation. 
You will look in vain in the Bible Society correspond- 
ence for many a pearl that is contained in The Bible in 
Spain, and you will look in vain in The Bible in Spain 
for many a sentence which concludes some of the 
original letters. In one case, indeed, a letter concludes 
with Heber's hymn — 

' From Greenland's Icy Mountains,' 

with which Borrow's correspondent must already have 
been sufficiently familiar. But Borrow could not be 
other than Borrow, and the secretaries of the Bible 
Society had plentiful matter with which to astonish 
them. The finished production, however, is a fascinat- 
ing book. You read it again and it becomes still more 
entertaining. No wonder that it took the world by 
storm and made its author the lion of a season. 
* A queer book will be this same Bible in Spain,' wrote 
Borrow to John Murray in August 1841, 'containing 
all my queer adventures in that queer country ... it 
will make two nice foolscap octavo volumes.'^ It actually 
made three volumes, and Borrow was as irritated at Mr. 
Murray's delay in publishing as that publisher after- 
wards became at Borrow's own delay over Laveng7^o, 
The whole book was laboriously copied out by Mrs. 
Borrow. When this copy was sent to Mr. Murray, it 

' Samuel Smiles : A Publisher and his Friends, vol. ii. p. 485. 



*THE BIBLE IN SPAIN' 243 

was submitted to his ' reader,' who reported ' numerous 
faults in speUing and some in grammar,' to which 
criticism Borrow retorted that the copy was the work 
of 'a country amanuensis.' The book was pubHshed 
in December 1842, but has the date 1843 on its title- 
page.^ In its three-volumed form 4750 copies of the 
book were issued by July 1843, after which countless 
copies were sold in cheaper one-volumed form. Success 
had at last come to Borrow. He was one of the most 
talked-of writers of the day. His elation may be 
demonstrated by his discussion with Dawson Turner as 
to whether he should leave the manuscript of The Bible 
in Spain to the Dean and Chapter's Library at Nor- 
wich or to the British Museum, by his gratification 
at the fact that Sir Robert Peel referred to his book 
in the House of Commons, and by his pleasure in the 
many appreciative reviews which, indeed, were for the 
most part all that an ambitious author could desire. 
* Never,' said JVie Eocaminei', ' was book more legibly 
impressed with the unmistakable mark of genius.' 
' There is no taking leave of a book like this,' said 
the Athenceum. Better Christmas fare we have never 
had it in our power to offer our readers.' 

The publication of Jlie Bible in Spain made 
Borrow famous for a time. Hitherto he had been 
known only to a small religious community, the 
coterie that ran the Bible Society. Even the large 
mass of people who subscribed to that Society knew 
its agent in Spain only by meagre allusions in the 
Annual Reports. Now the world was to talk about 
him, and he enjoyed being talked about. Borrow 

^ The Bible in Spain ; or The Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an 
Englishman in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula. By 
George Borrow, author of The Gypsies of Spain. In three volumes. London : 
John Murray, Albemarle St., 1843. 



244 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

declared — in 1842 — that the five years he passed in 
Spain were the most happy years of his existence. 
But then he had not had a happy life during the 
previous years, as we have seen, and in Russia he had 
a toilsome task with an added element of uncertainty 
as to the permanence of his position. The five years 
in Spain had plentiful adventure, and they closed in a 
pleasant manner. Yet the year that followed, even 





A SHEKEL 

given to Borrow by Hasfeld, his Danish friend, as a tahsman when they parted at St. 
Petersburg. In The Bible in Spain Borrow relates that he showed this shekel at 
Gibraltar to a Jew, who exclaimed, ' Brothers, witness, these are the letters of Solomon. 
This silver is blessed. We must kiss this money.' 

though it found him almost a country squire, was not 
a happy one. Once again the world did not want him 
and his books — not the Gypsies of Spain for example. 
Seven weeks after publication it had sold only to the 
extent of some three hundred copies.^ But the 
happiest year of Borrow's life was undoubtedly 
the one that followed the publication of The Bible in 
Spain. Up to that time he had been a mere adven- 
turer ; now he was that most joyous of beings — a 
successful author ; and here, from among his Papers, 
is a carefully preserved relic of his social triumph : 

^ Herbert Jenkins : Life, p. 341. 



' THE BIBLE IN SPAIN ' 245 



To George Borrow, Esq., at Mr. Murray's, Book- 
seller, Albemarle Street. 

4 (.'aiilton Terrace, Tuesday, ZOth May. 
The Prussian Minister and Madam Bunsen would be very 
happy to see Mr. Borrow to-morrow, Wednesday evening, about 
half past nine o'clock or later, when some German national songs 
will be performed at their house, which may possibly suit Mr. 
Borrow's taste. They hoped to have met him last night at the 
Bishop of Norwich's, but arrived there too late. They had 
already commissioned Lady Hall (sister to Madam Bunsen) to 
express to Mr. Borrow their wish for his acquaintance. 

In a letter to his wife, of which a few lines are 
printed in Dr. Knapp's book, he also writes of this visit 
to the Prussian Minister, where he had for company 
' Princes and Members of Parliament.' ' I was the 
star of the evening,' he says ; ' I thought to myself, 
" what a difference ! " ' ^ The following letter is in a 
more sober key : 

To Mrs. George Borrow, Oulton, Suffolk. 

Wednesday, .58 Jermvn Street. 
Dear Cakreta, — I was glad to receive your letter; I half 
expected one on Tuesday. I am, on the whole, very comfortable, 
and people are kind. I passed last Sunday at Clapham with Mrs. 

^ Knapp's Life, vol. i. p. 398. In the Annals of the Jlarford Family, edited 
by Alice Harford (Westminster Press, 1909), there is an account of this 
gathering in a letter from J. Harford-Battersby to Louisa Harford. 
There was present ' the amusing author of The Bible in Spain, a man who is 
remarkable for his extraoi'dinary powers as a linguist, and for the originality 
of his character, not to speak of the wonderful adventures he narrates, and 
the ease and facility with which he tells them. He kept us laughing a good 
part of breakfast time by the oddity of his remarks, as well as the positive- 
ness of his assertions, often rather startling, and, like his books, partaking 
of the marvellous.' 



246 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Browne ; I was glad to go there for it was a gloomy day. They 
are now glad enough to ask me : I suppose I must stay in London 
through next week. I have an invitation to two grand parties, and 
it is as well to have something for one's money. I called at the 
Bible Society — all remarkably civil, Joseph especially so. I think 
I shall be able to manage with my own Dictionary. There is now a 
great demand for Morrison. Yesterday I again dined at the Murray s. 
There was a family party ; very pleasant. To-morrow I dine with 
an old school-fellow. Murray is talking of printing a new edition 
to sell for five shillings : those rascals, the Americans, have, it 
seems, reprinted it, and are selling it for eighteen pence. Murray 
says he shall print ten thousand copies ; it is chiefly wanted 
for the Colonies. He says the rich people and the libraries have 
already got it, and he is quite right, for nearly three thousand 
copies have been sold at 27s.^ There is no longer the high 
profit to be made on books there formerly was, as the rascals 
abroad pirate the good ones, and in the present state of copyright 
there is no help ; we can, however, keep the American edition out 
of the Colonies, which is something. I have nothing more to say 
save to commend you not to go on the water without me ; perhaps 
you would be overset ; and do not go on the bridge again till I 
come. Take care of Habismilk and Craffs ; kiss the little mare 
and old Hen. George Borkow. 

The earliest literary efforts of Borrow in Spain were 
his two translations of St. Luke's Gospel — the one into 
Romany, the other into Basque. This last book he 
did not actually translate himself, but procured ' from 
a Basque physician of the name of Oteiza.' 

' 4750 copies were sold in the three volume form iu 1843, and a sixth 
and cheaper edition the same year sold 9000 copies. 



'THE BIBLE IN SPAIN' 



247 



EVANGELIOA 
8an Lucasen Onlssan* 



EL CVANOELIO SEpUN S LUCAS 

UfBttcito al tumtnct. 



MADRID. 

Imprent* lie Is aoMrxfiiA T(rooiiA>ic» 
1838. 



TITLE-PAGE OF BASQUE TRANS- 
LATION BY OTEIZA OF THE 
GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE 



e Jllbaiarto XmccU). 

aftOTOBono 



Vx EviKGEUO SEGOH S. LdC«S, 



[837. 



IITLE-PAGE OF FIRST EDITION 

OF ROMANY TRANSLATION OF 

THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE 






1, or andr^ ocoiu matejo chi 
3 'slnabaD ot^ yegoes , so5 la pe 
ban tfUBipBS ^GalileTcs^ca^^ 
bsbia bucbarado ^[ato oodre'la 
iiiinii l li » hw dsjaaoi.AnJW^i^o-^ 
kldtpeoaodot "* 



K«*«lv» 



•J!i 



Y Xesusles ruij£l6,pei]aj 
J Pendmbetais; qtie ocotas GoUIejei 
slniroQ cliore5 but^ qu« sares «9 
aveces, por tcrelar jmlamln bucbia? 
ocooasj 

9j,SaDgue pimelo , que oanab 
Tat^si na querelareU |iinirni)Ma, aoe»»t< 
e* sare? 'aerareb andn a mati^a 
beda. 

4. Andjac sasta ittwrhiiin ooolaf 
deque; otor manuces, oprd coilKS 
per6 a.v4u«xJ*ai« and re Si!o^ ,5 ^ 
los aiaro : j peTicbabelais, que fteamilfifijfl^ 
debrtdron but6 ous^os sarei maDO- 
ces 304 tocabel^bao antk^ Jeiuaa* 
lem? )■(.*!>.■ •» 

S SaDgue penelOi qu« oajiaL' 



unil id 03 querdaieiJ iwirlwiwin, C«&fitee 
05 sares c&erareb.-eEdsa a mac^ 

\ peneUba uo^iM oeanatwJ'Xt^, 

ih ; Maoo tejehbi y i wrtw i ffl i t-gy 

J ehjliStf ofota «Bl»an<W d»6,^.»«^<:n\ 
voaJeal2sh& . ft? \/ 

, nsjbi Biqodai trio top. ^ J»^,^ 

Mona LiimliU #-'■— ■t~ *" **r"^- 
idatb^ t ?el^ pu»; dP»^fe£.'*-I'S>V>4 

8. linJ ocola radei* y lo pauu 
ErauA' mequelela aun ocona oeA 
y b eavan al «Tngn », y U cti!b3>« 

9. Asia sal ocoDO dJ5a»e mibao; 

'•1°' V ha 'aioi yeqae »d*f-, T i fft)*, 
SOS latlaba bm^ de •^dipg t^feLj L 
deqoa J otoi berjis babia; ]pinabS ^*OVST«ji!j«.i( 
(l^^kwaquoiurls asiis dicax sola ^ 

onri "--'' . ^*>^^aX^iJi. 

la. Parhdic6Jesu8,Uanilue. '^ 






TWO PAGES FROM BORROWS CORRECTED PROOF SHEETS OF 
ROMANY TRANSLATION OF THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE 



CHAPTER XXIII 

RICHARD FORD 

The most distinguished of Sorrow's friends in the years 
that succeeded his return from Spain was Richard Ford, 
whose interests were so largely wrapped-up in the story 
of that country. Ford was possessed of a very interest- 
ing personality, which was not revealed to the public 
until Mr. Rowland E. Prothero issued his excellent 
biography^ in 1905, although Ford died in 1858. This 
delay is the more astonishing as Ford's Handbook for 
Travellers in Spam was one of the most famous books of 
its day. Ford's father. Sir Richard Ford, was a friend 
of William Pitt, and twice sat in Parliament, being 
at one time Under-Secretary of State for the Home 
Department. He ended his official career as a police 
magistrate at Bow Street, but deserves to be better 
known to fame as the creator of the mounted police 
force of London. Ford was born with a silver spoon 
in his mouth, inheriting a fortune from his father, 
and from his mother an extraordinary taste for art. 
Although called to the bar he never practised, but 
spent his time in travelling on the Continent, building 
up a valuable collection of books and paintings. He 
was three times married, and all these unions seem to 

1 The Letters of Richard Ford, 1797-1858, edited by Rowland E. Prothero, 
M.V.O. John Murray, 1906. 
248 



RICHARD FORD 249 

have been happy, in spite of an almost unpleasant 
celerity in the second alliance, which took place nine 
months after the death of his first wife. A very large 
portion of his life he devoted to Spain, which he knew 
so intimately that in 1845 he produced that remarkable 
Handbook in two closely printed volumes, a most 
repellent-looking book in appearance to those who 
are used to contemporary typography, usually so 
attractive. Ford, in fact, was so full of his subject 
that instead of a handbook he wrote a work which 
ought to have appeared in half a dozen volumes. In 
later editions the book was condensed into one of Mr. 
Murray's usual guide-books, but the curious may still 
enjoy the work in its earliest form, so rich in discus- 
sions of the Spanish people, their art and architecture, 
their history and their habits. The greater part of the 
letters in Mr. Prothero's collection are addressed to 
Addington, who was our ambassador to Madrid for 
some years, until he was superseded by George 
Villiers, Lord Clarendon, with whom Borrow came so 
much in contact. Those letters reveal a remarkably 
cultivated mind and an interesting outlook on life, an 
outlook that was always intensely anti-democratic. It 
is impossible to sympathise with him in his brutal 
reference to the execution by the Spaniards of Robert 
Boyd, a young Irishman who was captured with Torrijos 
by the Spanish Government in 1831. Richard Ford 
apparently left Spain very shortly before George Borrow 
entered that country. Ford passed through Madrid on 
his way to England in September 1833. He then 
settled near Exeter, purchasing an Elizabethan cottage 
called Heavitree House, with twelve acres of land, 
and devoted himself to turning it into a beautiful 
mansion. Presumably he first met Borrow in Mr. John 



250 GEORGE BORKOW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Murray's famous drawing-room soon after the publica- 
tion of The Gypsies of Spain. He tells Addington, 
indeed, in a letter of 14th January 1841 : 

I have made acquaintance with an extraordinary fellow, 
George Borrow, who went out to Spain to convert the gypsies. 
He is about to publish his failure, and a curious book it will be. 
It was submitted to my perusal by the hesitating Murray. 

Ford's article upon Sorrow's book appeared in The 
British and Foreign Review, and Ford was delighted 
that the book had created a sensation, and that he had 
given sound advice as to publishing the manuscript. 
When IVie Bible in Spain was ready, Ford was one of 
the first to read it. Then he wrote to John Murray : 

I read Borrow with great delight all the way down per rail. 
You may depend upon it that the book will sell, which after all is 
the rub. 

And in that letter Ford describes the book as putting 
him in mind of Gil Bias with * a touch of Bunyan.' 
Lockhart himself reviewed the book in The Quarterly, 
so Ford had to go to the rival organ — The Edinburgh 
Review — receiving £44 for the article, which sum, he 
tells us, he invested in Chateau Margaux. 

Ford's first letter to Borrow in my collection is 
written in Spanish : 



To George Borrow, Esq., Oulton Hall, Lowestoft. 

Heavitree HousEj Exeter, Jan. \d, 1842. 
QuERiDO CoMPADRE, — Mucho m'ha alegrado el buen termino 
de sus trabajos literarios que V.M. me participci. Vaya con los 
picaros de Zincali, buenas pesetas han cobrado — siempre he tenido 
a los Sres. M. como muy hombres de bien, suele ser que los que 
tratan mucho con personages de categoria, tomen un algo del 



RICHARD FORD 251 

grande y liberal. Convega V.INI. que soy critico de tipo, y que 
digo, ' Bahi de los gabicotes.' Conosco bastante loque agradecera 
al muy noble y illustrado publico — conque sigue V.M. adelante y 
no dejes nada en el tintero, pero por vida del Demonio, huyese 
V.M. de los historiadores espailoles, embusteros y majaderos. 
Siento mucho que V.M. haya salido de Londres, salgo de esto 
Sabato, y pienso hacer una visita de como unas ties semanas, en 
la casa maternal, como es mi costumbre por el mes de los 
aguinaldos. Con mucho gusto hubiera praticado con V.M. y 
charleado sobre las cosas de Espaila y otra chismografia gitanesca 
y zandungera, por ahora no entiendo nada de eso. No dejare 
de llevar conmigo los papeles y documentos que V.M. se sirvio de 
remitirme a Cheltenham. Hare de ellos un paquete, y lo confiare 
d los Seilores Murray, para quando V.M. guste reclamarlo. Hare 
el mio posible de averiguar y aprofundicar aquellos misterios y 
gente cstrambotica. El Sefior Murray hijo, me escrive muy 
contento de la Bibl'ia en Espana. Desearia yo escribir un articulo 
sobre asunto tan relleno de interes. Talvez el articulo mio de los 
Gitanos parecera en el numero proximo, y en tal caso ha de ser 
mas util a V.M. que no hubiera sido ahora. La vida y memoria 
de las revistas, es muy corta. Salen como miraposas y mueren en 
un dia. Los muertos y los idos no tienen amigos. Los vivos a 
la mesa, y los muertos ii la huesa. Al istante que esta imprimido 
un nuevo numero, el pasado y esta olvidado y entra entre las 
cosas del Rey Wamba, Que le parece a V.M., ultimamente en 
un baile donde sacaron un Rey de Hubas (twelfth night) tire El 
Krallis de los Zincali. Incluyo a V. Majestad tabula, de veras es 
precise que yo tengo en mis venas algunas gotitas de legitimo 
errante. El Senor Gagargos viene a ser nombrado Consul espailol 
a Tunis, donde no le faltaron medios de adelantarse en el idioma 
y literatura arabica. Queda de S.M. afemo. su amigo, Q.B.S.M., 

Richard Ford.^ 

^ Dear Friend, — I was glad to hear from you of the successful termina- 
tion of your literary work. Fancy those rogues of Zincali ! They have 
managed to make good money — I always thought Messrs. M. very decent 
people, it usually happens that those who have much to do with good class 
of people become themselves somewhat large-minded and liberal. You 
must admit that I am a model critic, and that I cry, 'Luck to the Books.' 
Full well do I know how you thank the most noble and illustrious public ! 



252 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 
Here is a second letter of the following month : 

February 2Qth, Heavithee House, Exeter. 
Batuschca Borrow, — I am glad that the paper pleased you, 
and I think it calculated to promote the sale, which a too copious 
extracting article does not always do, as people think that they 
have had the cream. Napier sent me £'ii^ for the thirty-two pages ; 
this, with Kemble's <£*50, 8s. for the Zincali, nearly reaches dfi'lOO : 
I lay it out in claret, being not amiss to do in the world, and 
richer by many hundreds a year than last year, but with a son at 
Eton and daughters coming out, and an overgrown set of servants, 
money is never to be despised, and I find that expenditure by 
some infernal principle has a greater tendency to increase than 
income, and that when the latter increases it never does so in the 
ratio of the former — enough of that. How to write an article 
without being condensed — epigrammatical and epitomical cream- 



Go ahead, therefore, and leave nothing forgotten in the ink-pot ; but by all 
that is holy, shun the Spanish historians, who are liars and fools ! I regret 
very much that you should have left London ; I leave here on Saturday 
with the intention of paying a visit of about three weeks to the maternal 
home, as is my custom in the month of the Christmas boxes. Very much 
would I have liked to see you and discuss with you about things of Spain 
and other gypsy lore and fancy topics, but of which at, present nothing do I 
understand. I shall not fail to take with me the papers and documents 
which you kindly sent me to Cheltenham. I will make them into a parcel 
and leave them with Messrs. Murray, so that you can send for them when- 
ever you like. I shall do my best to penetrate those mysteries and that 
strange people. Mr. Murray, junior, writes in a pleased tone respecting 
The Bible in Spain. I should like to write an article on a subject so full of 
interest. Possibly my article on the gypsies will appear in the next number, 
and in such case it will prove more useful to you than if it appeared now. 
The life and memory of i-eviews are very short. They appear like butterflies, 
and die in a day. The dead and the departed have no friends. The living to 
the feast, the dead to the grave. No sooner does a new number appear 
than the last one is already forgotten and joins the things of the past. 
What do you think ? At a party recently in which a drawing was held, I 
drew the Krallis de los Zincali. I beg to enclose the table (or index) for 
your Majesty's guidance ; really, I must have in my veins a few drops of the 
genuine wanderer. Mr. Gagargos has been just appointed Spanish Consul 
in Tunis, where he will not lack means for progressing in the Arabic 
language and literature. — Yours, etc., R. F. 



RICHARD FORD 253 

skimming' that is — I know not, one has so much to say and so 
little space to say it in. 

I rejoice to hear of your meditated biography ; really I am 
your wet nurse, and you ought to dedicate it to me ; take time, but 
not too much ; avoid all attempts to write fine; just dash down 
the first genuine uppouring idea and thoughts in the plainest 
language and that which comes first, and then fine it and com- 
press it. Let us have a glossary; for people cry out for a 
Dragoman, and half your local gusto evaporates. 

I am amazed at the want of profits — 'tis sad to think what 
meagre profits spring from pen and ink ; but Cervantes died a 
beggar and is immortal. It is the devil who comes into the 
market with ready money : No solvendum in futuro ; I well know 
that it is cash down which makes the mare to go ; dollars will add 
spurs even to the Prince of Mustard's paces. 

It is a bore not receiving even the crumbs which drop from such 
tables as those spread by Mr. Eyre : Murray, however, is a deep 
cove, 1/ muy pratico en cosas de libreteria: and he knew that 
the first out about Afghan would sell prodigiously. I doubt 
now if Lady Sale would now be such a general Sale. Murray builds 
solid castles in Eyre. Los de Espana rezalo bene de ser siempre 
muy Cosas de Espana : Cachaza ! Cachaza ! firme, firme ! Arhse ! 
no dejei nada en el tintero ; basta que sea nuevo y muy picjuunte 
cor sal y ajo : a los Ingleses le gustan mucho las Longanizas de 
Abarbenel y los buenos Choriyos de Montanches : 

El handbook sa her concluido jeriayer: abora principia el 
trabajo: Tengo benho un monton de papel acombroso. El 
menester reducirlo a la mitad y eso so hara castratandolo de lo 
bueno duro y particolar a romperse el alma : 

I had nothing to do whatever with the manner in which the 
handbook pufF w^as affixed to your book. I wrote the said 
paper, but concluded that Murray would put it, as usual, in 
the flyleaf of the book, as he does in his others, and the 
Q. Rev. 

Sabe mucho el hijo — ha imaginado altacar mi obresilla al 
flejo de vuestra iramortalidad y lo que le toca de corazon, 
facilitarsele la venta. 

Yo no tengo nada en eso y quede tanalustado amo V" a la 
primera vista de aquella hoja volante. Conque Mantengare V™ 



254 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

bueno y alegre y mande V" siempre, a S : S : S : y buen Critico, 
L : I : M : B., R. F. 

During these years — 1843 and onwards — Borrow 
was regularly corresponding with Ford. I quote a 
sentence from one of these letters : 

Borrow writes me word that his Life is nearly ready, and it 
will run the Bible hull down. If he tells truth it will be a queer 
thing. I shall review it for The Edinburgh. 



To George Borrow, Esq., Oulton Hall, Lowestoft. 

123 Park Mansions^ Thursday, April 13, 1843. 
Batuschca B., — Knowing that you seldom see a newspaper I 
send you one in which Peel speaks very handsomely of your labour. 
Such a public testimonial is a good puff, and I hope will attract 
purchasers. — Sincerely yours, R. F. 

This speech of Peel's in the House of Commons, in 
which in reply to a very trivial question by Dr. 
Bowring, then M.P. for Bolton, upon the subject 
of the correspondence of the British Government with 
Turkey, the great statesman urged : 

It might have been said to Mr. Borrow, with respect to 
Spain, that it would be impossible to distribute the Bible in that 
country in consequence of the danger of offending the prejudices 
which prevail there ; yet he, a private individual, by showing some 
zeal in what he believed to be right, succeeded in triumphing over 
many obstacles.^ 

Borrow was elated with the compliment, and asked 
Mr. Murray two months later if he could not advertise 
the eulogium with one of his books. 

1 The Times, April 12, 1843. 



RICHARD FORD 255 

In June 1844, while the Handbook for Travellers 
in Spain was going to press, Ford went on a visit to 
Borrow at Oulton, and describes the pair as ' two rum 
coves in a queer country ' ; and further gives one of 
the best descriptions of the place : 

His house hangs over a lonely lake covered with wild fowl, and 
is girt with dark firs through which the wind sighs sadly. 

When the Handbook for Travellers in Spain was 
published in 1845 it was agreed that Borrow should 
write the review for The Quarterly. Instead of writing 
a review Borrow, possessed by that tactlessness which 
so frequently overcame him, wrote an article on ' Spain 
and the Spaniards,' very largely of abuse, an absolutely 
useless production from the point of view of Ford the 
author, and of Lockhart, his editor friend. Borrow 
never forgave Lockhart for returning this manuscript, 
but that it had no effect on Ford's friendship is shown 
by the following letter, dated 1846 (p. 258), written 
long after the unfortunate episode, and another in 
Dr. Knapp's Lfe, dated 1851 : 



To Mrs. Borrow, Oulton Hall, Lowestoft. 

Oct. 6, 1844, Cheltenham. 

My dear Madam, — I trouble you with a line to say that I 
have received a letter from Don Jorge, from Constantinople. He 
evidently is now anxious to be quietly back again on the banks of 
your peaceful lake ; he speaks favourably of his health, which has 
been braced up by change of air, scenery, and occupations, so I 
hope he will get through next winter without any bronchitis, and 
go on with his own biography. 

He asks me when Handbook will be done ? Please to tell him 
that it is done and printing, but that it runs double the length 



256 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

which was contemplated : however, it will be a queer book, and 
tell him that we reserve it until his return to 7-eview it. I am 
now on the point of quitting this pretty place and making for my 
home at Hevitre, where we trust to arrive next Thursday. 

Present my best compliments to your mother, and believe me, 
your faithful and obedient servant, Rch. Ford. 

When you write to Don Jorge thank him for his letter. 



To George Borrow, Esq., Oulton Hall, Lowestoft. 

123 Parliament Street, 
Grosvbnor Square, Feb. 17, 1846. 

Dear Borrow, — El hombre propose pero Dios es qtie dispose. 
I had hope to have run down and seen you and yours in your 
quiet Patmos ; but the Sangrados will it otherwise. I have never 
been quite free from a tickling pain since the bronchitis of last 
year, and it has recently assumed the form of extreme relaxation 
and irritation in the uvula, which is that pendulous appendage 
which hanffs over the orifice of the throat. Mine has become so 
seriously elongated that, after submitting for four days last week 
to its being burnt with caustic every morning in the hopes that it 
might thus crimp and contract itself, I have been obliged to have 
it amputated. This has left a great soreness, which militates 
against talking and deglutition, and would render our charming 
chats after the Madeira over la cheminea del cueldo inadvisable. 
I therefore defer the visit : my Sangrado recommends me, when 
the summer advances, to fly away into change of air, change of 
scene ; in short, must seek an hejira as you made. How strange 
the coincidence ! but those who have wandered much about 
require periodical migration, as the encaged quail twice a year 
beats its breast against the wires. 

I am not quite determined where to go, whether to Scotland 
and the sweet heath-aired hills, or to the wild rocks and clear 
trout streams of the Tyrol ; it is a question between the gun and 
the rod. If I go north assuredly si Dios quiere I will take your 
friendly and peaceful abode in my way. 

As to ray immediate plans I can say nothing before Thursday, 



RICHARD FORD 257 

when the Sangrado is to report on some diagnosis which he 
expects. 

Meanwhile Handbook is all but out, and Lockhart and Murray 
are eager to have you in the Q. R. I enclose you a note from the 
editor. How feel you inclined ? I would send you down 30 
sheets, and you might run your eye through them. There are 
plums in the pudding. Richard Ford. 

A proof in slip form of the rejected review, with 
Borrow's corrections written upon it, is in my possession. 
Our author pictures Gibraltar as a human entity thus 
addressing Spain : 

Accursed land ! I hate thee, and far from being a defence, will 
invariably prove a thorn in thy side. 

And so on through many sentences of excited rhetoric. 
Borrow forgot while he wrote that he had a book to 
review — a book, moreover, issued by the publishing 
house which issued the periodical in which his review 
was to appear. And this book was a book in ten 
thousand — a veritable mine of information and out of 
the way learning. Surely this slight reference amid 
many dissertations of his own upon Spain was to damn 
his friend's book with faint praise : 

A Handbook is a Handbook after all, a very useful thing, but 
still — the fact is that we live in an age of humbug, in which 
everything, to obtain note and reputation, must depend less upon 
its own intrinsic merit than on the name it bears. The present 
book is about one of the best books ever written upon Spain ; 
but we are afraid that it will never be estimated at its proper 
value ; for after all a Handbook is a Handbook. 

Yet successful as was Ford's Handbook, it is doubtful 
but that Borrow was right in saying that it had better 
have been called Wanderings in Spain or Wonders 



258 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

of the Peninsula. How much more gracious was the 
statement of another great authority on Spain — Sir 
WilHam Stirling-Maxwell — who said that 'so great a 
literary achievement had never before been performed 
under so humble a title.' The article, however, 
furnishes a trace of autobiography in the statement 
by Borrow that he had long been in the habit of 
reading Don Quixote once every nine years. Yet 
he tells us that he prefers Le Sage's Gil Bias to 
Don Quixote, 'the characters introduced being certainly 
more true to nature.' But altogether we do not wonder 
that Lockhart declined to publish the article. Here is 
the last letter in my possession ; after this there is one 
in the Knapp collection dated 1851, acknowledging a 
copy of Lavengro, in which Ford adds ; ' Mind when 
you come to see the Exhibition you look in here, for 
I long to have a chat,' and so the friendship appears 
to have collapsed as so many friendships do. Ford 
died at Heavitree in 1858 : 



To George Borrow, Esq., Oulton Hall, Lowestoft 

Heavitree, Jany. 28, 1846. 

QuERiDo Don Jorge, — How are you getting on in health and 
spirits ? and how has this absence of winter suited you ? Are you 
inclined for a run up to town next week ? I propose to do so, 
and Murray, who has got Washington Irving, etc., to dine with 
him on Wednesday the 4th, writes to me to know if I thought 
you could be induced to join us. Let me whisper in your ear, 
yea : it will do you good and give change of air, scene and 
thought : we will go and beat up the renowned Billy Harper, and 
see how many more ribs are stoved in. 

I have been doing a paper for the Q. R. on Spanish Architec- 
ture ; how gets on the Lavengro "^ I see the ' gypsies ' are coming 
out in the Colonial, which will have a vast sale. 



RICHARD FORD 259 

John Murray seems to be flourishing in spite of corn and 
railomania. 

Remember me kindly and respectfully to your Ladies, and beg 
them to tell you what good it will do you to have a frisk up to 
town, and a little quiet chat with your pal and amigo, 

Richard Ford. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

IN EASTERN EUROPE 

In 1844 Borrow set out for the most distant holiday 
that he was ever to undertake. Passing through 
London in March 1844, he came under the critical 
eye of Ehzabeth Rigby, afterwards Lady Eastlake, 
that formidable critic who four years later — in 1848 — 
wrote the cruel review of Jane Eyre in The Quarterly 
that gave so much pain to Charlotte Bronte. She was 
not a nice woman. These sharp, ' clever ' women- 
critics rarely are ; and Borrow never made a pleasant 
impression when such women came across his path — 
instance Harriet Martineau, Frances Cobbe, and Agnes 
Strickland. We should sympathise with him, and not 
count it for a limitation, as some of his biographers 
have done. The future Lady Eastlake thus disposes 
of Borrow in her one reference to him : 

March 20. — Borrow came in the evening ; now a fine man, but 
a most disagreeable one ; a kind of character that would be most 
dangerous in rebellious times — one that would suffer or persecute 
to the utmost. His face is expressive of strong-headed determina- 
tion.^ 

Quoting this description of Borrow, Dr. Knapp 
describes it as ' shallow ' — for ' he was one of the 

* Journals and Correspondence of Lady Eastlake, edited by hei* nephew, 
Charles Eastlake Smith, vol. i. p. 124. John Murray, 1895. 
260 



IN EASTERN EUROPE 261 

kindest of men, as my documents show.' The descrip- 
tion is shallow enough, because the writer had no kind 
of comprehension of Borrow, but then, perhaps, his 
champion had not. Borrow was neither one of the 
* kindest of men ' nor the reverse. He was a good 
hater and a whole-hearted lover, and to be thus is 
to fill a certain uncomfortable but not discreditable 
place in the scheme of things. About a month later 
Borrow was on the way to the East, travelling by 
Paris and Vienna. From Paris he wrote to Mr. John 
Murray that Vidocq * wished much to have a copy 
of my Gypsies in Spain,' but suspects the Frenchman 
of desiring to produce a compressed translation. Will 
Mr. Murray have the book translated into French ? 
he asks, and so circumvent his wily friend.^ In June 
he is in Buda Pesth, whence he wrote to his wife : 

To Mrs. George Borrow, Oulton, Lowestoft 

Pesth, Hungary, \Ath June 1844. 
My dearest Carreta, — I was so glad to get your letter which 
reached me about nine days ago ; on receiving it, I instantly 
made preparations for quitting Vienna, but owing to two or three 
things which delayed me, I did not get away till the 20th ; I hope 
that you received the last letter which I sent, as I doubt not that 
you are all anxious to hear from me. You cannot think how 
anxious I am to get back to you, but since I am already come so 
far, it will not do to return before my object is accomplished. 
Heaven knows that I do not travel for travelling's sake, having 
a widely diiferent object in view. I came from Vienna here down 
the Danube, but I daresay I shall not go farther by the river, 
but shall travel through the country to Bucharest in Wallachia, 
which is the next place I intend to visit ; but Hungary is a widely 
different country to Austria, not at all civilised, no coaches, etc., 
but only carts and wagons ; however, it is all the same thing to 

' Life of Borrow by Herbert Jenkins, p. 361. 



262 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

me as I am quite used to rough it; Bucharest is about three 
hundred miles from here ; the country, as I have said before, is 
wild, but the people are quite harmless — it is only in Spain that 
any danger is to be feared from your fellow creatures. In 
Bucharest I shall probably stay a fortnight. I have a letter to a 
French gentleman there from Baron Taylor. Pesth is very much 
like Edinburgh — there is an old and a new town, and it is only 
the latter which is called Pesth, the name of the old is Buda, 
which stands on the side of an enormous mountain overlooking 
the new town, the Danube running between. The two towns 
together contain about 120,000 inhabitants ; I delivered the 
letter which dear Woodfall was kind enough to send ; it was 
to a person, a Scotchman, who is superintending in the building 
of the chain bridge over the Danube ; he is a very nice person, and 
has shown me every kind of civility ; indeed, every person here is 
very civil ; yesterday I dined at the house of a rich Greek ; the 
dinner was magnificent, the only drawback was that they pressed 
me too much to eat and drink ; there was a deal of champagne, 
and they would make me drink it till I was almost sick, for it is 
a wine that I do not like, being far too sweet. Since I have been 
here I have bathed twice in the Danube, and find myself much 
the better for it; I both sleep and eat better than I did. I have 
also been about another chapter, and get on tolerably well ; were 
I not so particular I should get on faster, but I wish that every- 
thing that I write in this next be first-rate. Tell Mama that this 
chapter begins with a dialogue between her and my father; I 
have likewise contrived to bring in the poor old dog in a manner 
which I think will be interesting, I began this letter some days 
ago, but have been so pleasantly occupied that I have made little 
progress till now. Clarke, poor fellow, does not know how to 
make enough of me. He says he could scarcely believe his eyes 
when he first received the letter, as he has just got The Bible in 
Spain from England, and was reading it. This is the 17th, and 
in a few days I start for a place called Debreczen, from whence 
I shall proceed gradually on my journey. The next letter which 
you receive will probably be from Transylvania, the one after that 
from Bucharest, and the third D.V. from Constantinople. If you 
like you may write to Constantinople, directing it to the care of 
the English Ambassador, but be sure to pay the postage. 



IN EASTERN EUROPE 263 

Before I left Vienna Baron Hammer, the great Orientalist, 
called upon me; his wife was just dead, poor thing, which pre- 
vented him showing- me all the civility which he would otherwise 
have done. He took me to the Imperial Library. Both my 
books were there, Gypsies and Bible. He likewise procured me a 
ticket to see the Imperial treasure. (Tell Henrietta that I saw 
there the diamond of Charles the Bold ; it is as large as a walnut.) 
I likewise saw the finest opal, as I suppose, in the world ; it was 
the size of a middling pear ; there was likewise a hyacinth as big 
as a swan's egg ; I likewise saw a pearl so large that they had 
wrought the figure of a cock out of it, and the cock was somewhat 
more than an inch high, but the thing which struck me most was 
the sword of Tamerlane, generally called Timour the Tartar; 
both the hilt and scabbard were richly adorned with diamonds 
and emeralds, but I thought more of the man than I did of them, 
for he was the greatest conqueror the world ever saw (I have 
spoken of him in Lavengro in the chapter about David Haggart). 
Nevertheless, although I have seen all these fine things, I shall 
be glad to get back to my Carreta and my darling mother and to 
dear Hen. From Debreczen I hope to write to kind dear Wood- 
fall, and to Lord from Constantinople. I must likewise write to 
Hasfeld. The mulct of thirty pounds upon Russian passports is 
only intended for the subjects of Russia. I see by the journals 
that the Emperor has been in England ; I wonder what he is 
come about ; however, the less I say about that the better, as I 
shall soon be in his country. Tell Hen that I have got her a 
large piece of Austrian gold money, worth about forty-two 
shillings; it is quite new and very handsome; considerably wider 
than the Spanish ounce, only not near so thick, as might be expected, 
being of considerable less value ; when I get to Constantinople 
I will endeavour to get a Turkish gold coin. I have also got a 
new Austrian silver dollar and a half one ; these are rather cumber- 
some, and I don't care much about them — as for the large gold 
coin, I carry i t in my pocket-book, which has been of great use to 
me hitherto. I have not yet lost anything, only a pocket hand- 
kerchief or two as usual ; but I was obliged to buy two other 
shirts at Vienna; the weather is so hot, that it is quite necessary 
to change them every other day ; they were beautiful linen ones, 
and I think you will like them when you see. I shall be so glad to 



264 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

get home and continue, if possible, my old occupation. I hope 
my next book will sell ; one comfort is that nothing like it 
has ever been published before. I hope you all get on comfort- 
ably, and that you catch some fish. I hope my dear mother is 
well, and that she will continue with you till the end of July at 
least ; ah ! that is my month, I was born in it, it is the pleasantest 
month in the year; would to God that my fate had worn as 
pleasant an aspect as the month in which I was born. God bless 
you all. Write to me, to the care of the British Embassy^ Con- 
stantinople. Kind remembrances to Pilgrim. 

In the intervening journey between Pesth and Con- 
stantinople he must have talked long and wandered 
far and wide among the gypsies, for Charles L. Brace 
in his Hungary in 1851 gives us a glimpse of him at 
Grosswardein holding conversation with the gypsies : 

They described his appearance — his tall, lank, muscular form 
— and mentioned that he had been much in Spain, and I saw that 
it must be that most ubiquitous of travellers, Mr. Borrow. 

The four following letters require no comment : 



To Mrs. George Borrow, Oulton, Lowestoft 

Debreczen, Hungary, Qth July 1844. 
My darling Carreta, — I write to you from Debreczen, a town 
in the heart of Hungary, where I have been for the last fortnight 
with the exception of three days during which I was making a 
journey to Tokay, which is about forty miles distant. My reason 
for staying here so long was my liking the place where I have 
experienced every kind of hospitality ; almost all the people in 
these parts are Protestants, and they are so fond of the very name 
of Englishmen that when one arrives they scarcely know how to 
make enough of him ; it is well the place is so remote that very 
few are ever seen here, perhaps not oftener than once in ten years, 
for if some of our scamps and swell mob were once to find their 
way there the good people of Hungary would soon cease to have 



IN EASTERN EUROPE 265 

much respect for the Enghsh in general ; as it is they think that 
they are all men of honour and accomplished gentlemen whom it 
becomes them to receive well in order that they may receive from 
them lessons in civilisation ; I wonder what they would think if 
they were to meet such fellows as Squarem and others whom I 
could mention. I find my knowledge of languages here of great 
use, and the people are astonished to hear me speak French, 
Italian, German, Russian, and occasionally Gypsy. I have already 
met with several Gypsies ; those who live abroad in the wildernesses 
are quite black; the more civilised wander about as musicians, 
playing on the fiddle, at which they are very expert, they speak 
the same languages as those in England, with slight variations, and 
upon the whole they understand me very well. Amongst other 
places I have been to Tokay, where I drank some of the wine. I 
am endeavouring to bring two or three bottles to England, for I 
thought of my mother and yourself and Hen., and I have got a 
little wooden case made ; it is very sweet and of a pale straw 
colour ; whether I shall be able to manage it I do not know ; 
however, I shall make the attempt. At Tokay the wine is only 
two shillings the bottle, and I have a great desire that you should 
taste some of it. I sincerely hope that we shall soon all meet 
together in health and peace. I shall be glad enough to get 
home, but since I am come so far it is as well to see as much as 
possible. Would you think it, the Bishop of Debreczen came to 
see me the other day and escorted me about the town, followed by 
all the professors of the college ; this was done merely because I 
was an Englishman and a Protestant, for here they are almost all 
of the reformed religion and full of love and enthusiasm for it. It 
is probable that you will hear from Woodfall in a day or two; 
the day before yesterday I wrote to him and begged him to write 
to you to let you know, as I am fearful of a letter miscarrying and 
your being uneasy. This is unfortunately post day and I must 
send away the letter in a very little time, so that I cannot say all 
to you that I could wish ; I shall stay here about a week longer, 
and from here shall make the best of my way to Transylvania and 
Bucharest ; I shall stay at Bucharest about a fortnight, and shall 
then dash off for Constantinople — I shan't stay there long — but 
when once there it matters not as it is a civilised country from 
which start steamers to any part where you may want to go. I 



266 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

hope to receive a letter from you there. You cannot imagine 
what pleasure I felt when I got your last. Oh, it was such a 
comfort to me ! I shall have much to tell you when I get back. 
Yesterday I went to see a poor wretch who is about to be hanged ; 
he committed a murder here two years ago, and the day after to- 
morrow he is to be executed — they expose the people here who 
are to suffer three days previous to their execution — I found him 
in a small apartment guarded by soldiers, with hundreds of people 
staring at him through the door and the windows ; I was admitted 
into the room as I went with two officers ; he had an enormous 
chain about his waist and his feet were manacled ; he sat smoking 
a pipe ; he was, however, very penitent, and said that he deserved 
to die, as well he might ; he had murdered four people, beating 
out their brains with a club ; he was without work, and requested 
of an honest man here to receive him into his house one night 
until the morning. In the middle of the night he got up, and 
with his brother, who was with him, killed every person in the 
house and then plundered it; two days after, he was taken; his 
brother died in prison ; I gave him a little money, and the gentle- 
man who was with me gave him some good advice ; he looked 
most like a wild beast, a huge mantle of skin covered his body ; 
for nine months he had not seen the daylight ; but now he is 
brought out into a nice clean apartment, and allowed to have 
everything he asks for, meat, wine, tobacco — nothing is refused him 
during these last three days. I cannot help thinking that it is a 
great cruelty to keep people so long in so horrid a situation ; it is 
two years nearly since he has been condemned. Do not be 
anxious if you do not hear from me regularly for some time. 
There is no escort post in the countries to which I am going. 
God bless my mother, yourself, and Hen. G. B. 



To Mrs. George Borrow, Oulton, Lowestoft 

Hermanstadt, July 30, 1844. 

My dearest Carreta, — I write to you aline or two from this 
place ; it is close upon the frontier of Wallachia. I hope to be in 
Bucharest in a few days — I have stopped here for a day owing to 
some difficulty in getting horses — I shall hasten onward as quick as 



IN EASTERN EUROPE 267 

possible. In Bucharest there is an English Consul, so that I 
shall feel more at home than I do here. I am only a few miles now 
from the termination of the Austrian dominions, their extent is 
enormous, the whole length of Hungary and Transylvania ; I shall 
only stay a few days in Bucharest and shall then dash off straight 
for Constantinople ; I have no time to lose as there is a high ridge 
of mountains to cross called the Balkans, where the winter commences 
at the beginning of September. I thought you would be glad to 
hear from me, on which account I write. I sent off a letter about 
a week ago from Klausenburg, which I hope you will receive. I 
have written various times from Hungary, though whether the 
letters have reached you is more than I can say. I wrote to 
Woodfall from Debreczen. I have often told you how glad I shall 
be to get home and see you again. If I have tarried, it has only 
been because I wished to see and learn as much as I could, for it 
was no use coming to such a distance for nothing. By the time 
I return I shall have made a most enormous journey, such as very 
few have made. The place from which I write is very romantic, 
being situated at the foot of a ridge of enormous mountains which 
extend to the clouds, they look higher than the Pyrenees. My 
health, thank God, is very good. I bathed to-day and feel all the 
better for it ; I hope you are getting on well, and that all our dear 
family is comfortable. I hope my dear mother is well. Oh, it is 
so pleasant to hope that I am still not alone in the world, and that 
there are those who love and care for me and pray for me. I 
shall be very glad to get to Constantinople, as from there 
there is no difficulty ; and a great part of the way to Russia 
is by sea, and when I am in Russia I am almost at home. I 
shall write to you again from Bucharest if it please God. 
It is not much more than eighty miles from here, but 
the way lies over the mountains, so that the journey will take 
three or four days. We travel here in tilted carts drawn by ponies ; 
the carts are without springs, so that one is terribly shaken. It is, 
however, very healthy, especially when one has a strong constitution. 
The carts are chiefly made of sticks and wickerwork ; they are, of 
coui'se, very slight, and indeed if they were not so they would soon 
go to pieces owing to the jolting. I read your little book every 
morning ; it is true that I am sometimes wrong with respect to the 
date, but I soon get right again ; oh, I shall be so glad to see you 



268 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

and my mother and old Hen. and Lucy and the whole dear circle. 
I hope Crups is well, and the horse. Oh, I shall be so glad to come 
back. God bless you, my heart's darling, and dear Hen. ; kiss her 
for me, and my mother. George Borrow. 



To Mrs. George Eorrow, Oulton, Lowestoft 

Bucharest^ August 5, 1844. 

My dearest Carreta, — I write you a few lines from the house 
of the Consul, Mr. Colquhoun, to inform you that I arrived at 
Bucharest quite safe : the post leaves to-day, and Mr. C. has 
kindly permitted me to send a note along with the official 
despatches. I am quite well, thank God, but I thought you would 
like to hear from me. Bucharest is in the province of Wallachia 
and close upon the Turkish frontier. I shall remain here a week 
or two as I find the place a very interesting one ; then I shall pro- 
ceed to Constantinople. I wrote to you from Hermanstadt last 
week and the week previous from Clausenburgh, and before I leave 
I shall write again, and not so brieflv as now. I have experienced 
every possible attention from Mr. C, who is a ver\' delighful 
person, and indeed everybody is very kind and attentive. I hope 
sincerely that you and Hen. are quite well and happy, and also my 
dear mother. God bless vou, dearest. George Borrow. 



To Mrs. George Borrow, Oulton, Lowestoft 

Bucharest, August 14, 1844. 
My DARLiXG Carreta, — To-morrow or the next day I leave 
Bucharest for Constantinople. I wrote to vou on my arrival a few 
days ago, and promise to write again before mv departure. I shall 
not be sorry to get to Constantinople, as from thence I can go where- 
everl think proper without any difficulty. Since I have been here, 
Mr. Colquhoun, the British Consul-General, has shown me every 
civility, and upon the whole I have not passed the time disagreeably. 
I have been chiefly occupied of late in rubbing up my Turkish a 
little, which I had almost forgotten ; there was a time when I wrote 



IN EASTERN EUROPE 269 

it better than any other language. It is coining again rapidly, 
and I make no doubt that in a little time I should speak it almost 
as well as Spanish, for I understand the groundwork. In Hungary 
and Germany I picked up some curious books, which will help to pass 
the time at home when I have nothing better to do. It is a long way 
from here to Constantinople, and it is probable that I shall be fifteen 
or sixteen days on the journey, as I do not intend to travel very 
fast. It is possible that I shall stay a day or two at Adrianople, 
which is half way. If you should not hear from me for some time 
don't be alarmed, as it is possible that I shall have no opportunities 
of writing till I get to Constantinople. Bucharest, where I am 
now, is close on the Turkish frontier, being only half a day's 
journey. Since I have been here, I have bought a Tartar dress and 
a couple of Turkish shirts. I have done so in order not to be 
stared at as I pass along. It is very beautiful and by no means 
dear. Yesterday I wrote to M, Since I have been here I 
have seen some English newspapers, and see that chap H. has 
got in with M. Perhaps his recommendation was that he had once 
insulted us. However, God only knows. I think I had never 
much confidence in M. I can read countenances as you know, and 
have always believed him to be selfish and insincere. I, however, 
care nothing about him, and will not allow, D.V,, any conduct of 
his to disturb me. I shall be glad to get home, and if I can but 
settle down a little, I feel that I can accomplish something great. 
I hope that my dear mother is well, and that you are all well. God 
bless you. It is something to think that since I have been away I 
have to a certain extent accomplished what I went about. I am 
stronger and better and hardier, my cough has left me, there is 
only occasionally a little huskiness in the throat. I have also 
increased my stock of languages, and my imagination is brightened. 
Bucharest is a strange place with much grandeur and much filth. 
Sincel have been here I have dined almost every day with Mr. C, who 
wants me to have an apartment in his house. I thought it, how- 
ever, better to be at an inn, though filthy. I have also dined once 
at the Russian Consul-Generars, whom I knew in Russia. Now 
God bless you my heart's darling ; kiss also Hen., write to my 
mother, and remember me to all friends. G. Borrow. 

The best letter that I have of this journey, and in- 



270 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

deed the best letter of Borrow's that I have read, is one 
from Constantinople to his wife— the only letter by 
him from that city : 

To Mrs. George Borrow, Oulton, Lowestoft 

Constantinople, 16th September 1844. 
My darling Carreta, — I am about to leave Constantinople 
and to return home. I have given up the idea of going to Eussia; 
I find that if I go to Odessa I shall have to remam in quarantine 
for fourteen days, which I have no inclination to do ; I am, more- 
over, anxious to get home, being quite tired of wandering, and 
desirous of being once more with my loved ones. This is a most 
interesting place, but unfortunately it is extremely dear. The 
Turks have no inns, and I am here at an English one, at which, 
though everything is comfortable, the prices are very high. 
To-day is Monday, and next Friday I purpose starting for 
Salonica in a steamboat — Salonica is in Albania. I shall then 
cross Albania, a journey of about three hundred miles, and get to 
Corfu, from which I can either get to England across Italy and 
down the Rhine, or by way of Marseilles and across France. I 
shall not make any stay in Italy if I go there, as I have nothing 
to see there. I shall be so glad to be at home with you once 
ao-ain, and to see my dear mother and Hen. Tell Hen. that I 
picked up for her in one of the bazaars a curious Armenian coin ; 
it is silver, small, but thick, with a most curious inscription upon 
it. I gave fifteen piastres for it. I hope it and the rest will get 
safe to England. I have bought a chest, which I intend to send 
by sea, and I have picked up a great many books and other 
things, and I wish to travel light ; I shall, therefore, only take a 
bag with a few clothes and shirts. It is possible that I shall be at 
home soon after your receiving this, or at most three weeks after. 
I hope to write to you again from Corfu, which is a British 
island with a British garrison in it, like Gibraltar ; the English 
newspapers came last week. I see those wretched French cannot 
let us alone, they want to go to war ; well, let them ; they richly 
deserve a good drubbing. The people here are very kind in their 
way, but home is home, especially such a one as mine, with true 



IN EASTERN EUROPE 271 

hearts to welcome me. Oh, I was so glad to get your letters ; they 
were rather of a distant date, it is true, but they quite revived 
me. I hope you are all well, and my dear mother. Since I have 
been here I have written to Mr. Lord. I was glad to hear that he 
has written to Hen. I hope Lucy is well ; pray remember me most 
kindly to her, and tell her that I hope to see her soon. I count 
so of getting into my summer-house again, and sitting down to 
write; I have arranged my book in my mind, and though it will 
take me a great deal of trouble to write it, I feel that when it is 
written it will be first-rate. My journey, with God's help, has done 
me a great deal of good. I am stronger than I was, and I can now 
sleep. I intend to draw on England for forty or fifty pounds ; if 
I don't want the whole of it, it will be all the same. I have still 
some money left, but I have no wish to be stopped on my journey 
for want of it. I am sorry about what you told me respecting the 
railway, sorry that the old coach is driven off the road. I shall 
patronise it as little as possible, but stick to the old route and 
Thurton George. What a number of poor people will these 
railroads deprive of their bread. I am grieved at what you say 
about poor M. ; he can take her into custody, however, and oblige 
her to support the children ; such is law, though the property may 
have been secured to her, she can be compelled to do that. Tell 
Hen. that there is a mosque here, called the mosque of Sultan 
Bajazet ; it is full of sacred pigeons ; there is a corner of the 
court to which the creatures flock to be fed, like bees, by hundreds 
and thousands ; they are not at all afraid, as they are never killed. 
Every place where they can roost is covered with them, their 
impudence is great ; they sprang originally from two pigeons 
brought from Asia by the Emperor of Constantinople. They are 
of a deep blue. God bless you, dearest. G. B. 

He returned home by way of Venice and Rome as 
the following two letters indicate : 



To Mrs. George Borrow, Oulton, Lowestoft 

Venice, 22nd Octr. 1844. 
My DEAREST Carreta, — I arrived this day at Venice, and 



272 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

though I am exceedingly tired I hasten to write a line to inform 
you of my well-being. I am now making for home as fast as 
possible, and I have now nothing to detain me. Since I wrote to 
you last I have been again in quarantine for two days and a half 
at Trieste, but I am glad to say that I shall no longer be detained 
on that account. I was obliged to go to Trieste, though it was 
much out of my way, otherwise I must have remained I know not 
how long in Corfu, waiting for a direct conveyance. After my 
liberation I only stopped a day at Corfu in order that I might 
lose no more time, though I really wished to tarry there a little 
longer, the people were so kind. On the day of my liberation, I 
had four invitations to dinner from the officers. I, however, made 
the most of my time, and escorted by one Captain Northcott, of 
the Rifles, went over the fortifications, which are most magni- 
ficent. I saw everything that I well could, and shall never forget 
the kindness with which I was treated. The next day I went to 
Trieste in a steamer, down the whole length of the Adriatic. I 
was horribly unwell, for the Adriatic is a bad sea, and very 
dangerous ; the weather was also very rough ; after stopping at 
Trieste a day, besides the quarantine, I left for Venice, and here I 
am, and hope to be on my route again the day after to-morrow. 
I shall now hurry through Italy by way of Ancona, Rome, and 
Civita Vecchia to Marseilles in France and from Marseilles to 
London, in not more than six days'" journey. Oh, I shall be so 
glad to get back to you and my mother (I hope she is alive and 
well) and Hen. I am glad to hear that we are not to have a war 
with those silly people, the French. The idea made me very 
uneasy, for I thought how near Oulton lay to the coast. You 
cannot imagine what a magnificent old town Venice is ; it is 
clearly the finest in Italy, although in decay ; it stands upon 
islands in the sea, and in many places is intersected with canals. 
The Grand Canal is four miles long, lined with palaces on either 
side. I, however, shall be glad to leave it, for there is no place to 
me like Oulton, where live two of my dear ones. I have told you 
that I am very tired, so that I cannot write much more, and I am 
presently going to bed, but I am sure that you will be glad to 
hear from me, however little I may write. I think I told you in 
my last letter that I had been to the top of Mount Olympus in 
Thessaly. Tell Hen. that I saw a whole herd of wild deer bound- 



IN EASTERN EUROPE 273 

ing down the cliff's, the noise they made was like thunder ; I also 
saw an enormous eagle — one of Jupiter's birds, his real eagles, 
for, according to the Grecian mythology, Olympus was his 
favourite haunt. I don't know what it was then, but at present 
the most wild savage place I ever saw; an immense way up I came 
to a forest of pines ; half of them were broken by thunderbolts, 
snapped in the middle, and the ruins lying around in the most 
hideous confusion ; some had been blasted from top to bottom 
and stood naked, black, and charred, in indescribable horridness ; 
Jupiter was the god of thunder, and he still seems to haunt 
Olympus. The worst is there is little water, so that a person 
might almost perish there of thirst ; the snow-water, however, 
when it runs into the hollows is the most delicious beverage ever 
tasted — the snow, however, is very high up. My next letter, I 
hope, will be from Marseilles, and I hope to be there in a very few 
days. Now, God bless you, my dearest ; write to my mother, and 
kiss Hen., and remember me kindly to Lucy and the Atkinses. 

G. B. 



To Mrs. George Borrow, Oulton, Lowestoft 

RoMEj 1 A^ov. 1844. 
My DEAREST Carreta, — My last letter was from Ancona ; the 
present is, as you see, from Rome. From Ancona I likewise wrote 
to Woodfall requesting he would send a letter of credit for twelve 
or fifteen pounds, directing to the care of the British Consul at 
Marseilles. I hope you received your letter and that he received 
his, as by the time I get to Marseilles I shall be in want of money 
by reason of the roundabout way I have been obliged to come. 
I am quite well, thank God, and hope to leave here in a day or 
two. It is close by the sea, and France is close by, but I am 
afraid I shall be obliged to wait some days at Marseilles before I 
shall get the letter, as the post goes direct from no part of Italy, 
though it is not more than six days' journey, or seven at most, 
from Ancona to London. It was that wretched quarantine at 
Corfu that has been the cause of all this delay, as it caused me to 
lose the passage by the steamer [original torn here] Ancona, which 
forced me to go round by Trieste and Venice, five hundred miles 

s 



274 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

out of my way, at a considerable expense. Oh, I shall be so glad 
to get home. " As I told you before, I am quite well; indeed, in 
better health than I have been for years, but it is very vexatious 
to be stopped in the manner I have been. God bless you, my 
darlino-. Write to mv mother and kiss her, G. Borrow. 



CHAPTER XXV 

LAVENGRO 

The Bible in Spain bears on its title-page the date 1843, 
although my copy makes it clear in Borrow's hand- 
writing that it was really ready for publication in the 
previous year. 



'l-rrmv 



i m 



1^ # \\\l 



Borrow's handwriting had changed its character some- 
what when he inscribed to his wife a copy of his next 
book Lavengro in 1851. 






trrtir 







In the intervening eight or nine years he had travelled 

275 



276 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

much — suffered much. During all these years he had 
been thinking about, talking about, his next book, 
making no secret of the fact that it was to be an Auto- 
biography. Even before The Bible in Spain was issued 
he had written to Mr. John Murray foreshadowing a 
book in which his father, William Taylor, and others 
were to put in an appearance. In the ' Advertisement ' 
to TJie Romany Rye he tells us that * the principal part 
of Lavengro was written in the year '43, that the whole 
of it was completed before the termination of the year 
'46, and that it was in the hands of the publisher in the 
year '48.' As the idea grew in his mind, his friend, 
Richard Ford, gave him much sound advice : 

Never mind nimminy-pimminy people thinking subjects low. 
Things are low in manner of handling. Draw Nature in rags and 
poverty, yet draw her truly, and how picturesque ! I hate your 
silver fork, kid glove, curly-haired school.^ 

And so in the following years, now to Ford, now to 
Murray, he traces his progress, while in 1844 he tells 
Dawson Turner that he is * at present engaged in a kind 
of Biography in the Robinson Crusoe style.' ^ But in 
the same year he went to Buda-Pesth, Venice, and 
Constantinople. Tlie first advertisement of the book 
appeared in The (Quarterly Review in July 1848, when 
Lavengro, An Autobiography, was announced. Later 
in the same year Mr. Murray advertised the book as 
Life, A Drama ; and Dr. Knapp, who had in his 
collection the original proof-sheets of Lavengro, repro- 
duces the title-page of the book which then stood as 
Life, A Drama, and bore the date 1849. Borrow's 
procrastination in delivering the complete book worried 
John Murray exceedingly. Not unnaturally, for in 

* Knapp's Life, vol. ii. p. 9. ' Ihid. p. 11. 



* LAVENGRO ' 277 

1848 he had offered the book at his annual sale dinner 
to the booksellers who had subscribed to it liberally. 
Eighteen months later Murray was still worrying 
Borrow for the return of the proof-sheets of the third 
and last volume. Not until January 1850 do we hear 
of it as Lavengro, An Autobw^raphy, and under this 
title it was advertised in The Quarterly Review for that 
month as ' nearly ready for publication.' In April 1850 
we find Woodfall, .John Murray's printer, writing letter 
after letter urging celerity, to which Mrs. Borrow 
replies, excusing the delay on account of her husband's 
indifferent health. They have been together in lodg- 
ings at Yarmouth. ' He had many plunges into the 
briny Ocean, which seemed to do him good.'^ Murray 
continued to exhort, but the final chapter did not reach 
him. 'My sale is fixed for December 12th,' he writes 
in November, ' and if I cannot show the book then I 
must throw it up.' This threat had little effect, for on 
13th December we find Murray still coaxing his 
dilatory author, telling him with justice that there 
were passages in his book 'equal to Defoe.' The very 
printer, Mr. Woodfall, joined in the chase. * The 
public is quite prepared to devour your book,' he 
wrote, which was unhappily not the case. Nor was 
Ford a happier prophet, although a true friend when he 
wrote — ' I am sure it will be the book of the year when 
it is brought forth.' ^ The activity of Mrs. Borrow in 
this matter of the publication of Lavengro is interest- 
ing. ' ]My husband ... is, I assure you, doing all he 
can as regards the completion of the book,' she writes 

* Knapp's Life, vol. ii. p. 19. 

2 Ford was right, however^ if authors wrote only for posterity, although 
1851 was not a very important year among the great Victorian writers. It 
produced Carlyle's John Sterling, Ruskin's Stones of Venice, and Kingsley's 
Yeast. 



278 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

to Mr. Murray in December 1849, and in November of 
the following year Murray writes to her to say that 
he is engraving Phillips's portrait of Borrow for the 
book. ' I think a cheering letter from you will do Mr. 
Borrow good,' she writes later. Throughout the whole 
correspondence between publisher and printer we 
are impressed by Mrs. Sorrow's keen interest in 
her husband's book, her anxiety that he should be 
humoured. Sadly did Borrow need to be humoured, 
for if he had cherished the illusion that his book would 
really be the * Book of the Year ' he was to suffer a 
cruel disillusion. Scarcely any one wanted it. All the 
critics abused it. In The Athenceum it was bluntly 
pronounced a failure. ' The story of Lavengro will 
content no one,' said Sir William Stirling-Maxwell in 
Frasers Magazi7ie. The book ' will add but little to 
Mr. Borrow's reputation,' said Blackwood. The only 
real insight into the book's significance was provided 
by Thomas Gordon Hake in a letter to The New 
Monthly Review, in which journal the editor, Harrison 
Ainsworth, had already pronounced a not very favour- 
able opinion. ' Lavengro" s roots will strike deep into 
the soil of English letters,' wrote Dr. Hake, and he 
then pronounced a verdict now universally accepted. 
George Henry Lewes once happily remarked that he 
would make an appreciation of Boswell's Life of 
Johnson a test of friendship. Many of us would be 
almost equally inclined to make such a test of Borrow's 
Lavengr^o. Tennyson declared that an enthusiasm for 
Milton's Lycidas was a touchstone of taste in poetry. 
May we not say that an enthusiasm for Borrow's 
Lavengro is now a touchstone of taste in English 
prose literature ? 

But the reception of Lavengro by the critics, and 



' LAVENGRO ' 279 

also by the public/ may be said to have destroyed 
Borrow's moral fibre. Henceforth, it was a soured and 
disappointed man who went forth to meet the world. 
We hear much in the gossip of contemporaries of 
Borrow's eccentricities, it may be of his rudeness and 
gruffness, in the last years of his life. Only those who 
can realise the personality of a self-contained man, 
conscious, as all genius has ever been, of its achieve- 
ment, and conscious also of the failure of the world to 
recognise, will understand — and will sympathise. 

Borrow, as we have seen, took many years to write 
Lavengro. ' I am writing the work,' he told Dawson 
Turner, ' in precisely the same manner as 21ie Bible 
in Spain, viz., on blank sheets of old account-books, 
backs of letters,' etc., and he recalls Mahomet writing 
the Koran on mutton bones as an analogy to his own 
'slovenliness of manuscript.'^ I have had plenty of 
opportunity of testing this slovenliness in the collection 
of manuscripts of portions of Lavengro that have come 
into my possession. These are written upon pieces of 
paper of all shapes and sizes, although at least a third of 
the book in Borrow's very neat handwriting is contained 
in a leather notebook, of which I give examples of the 
title-page and opening leaf in facsimile. The title-page 
demonstrates the earliest form of Borrow's conception. 
Not only did he then contemplate an undisguised auto- 
biography, but even described himself, as he frequently 
did in his conversation, as *a Norfolk man.' Before 
the book was finished, however, he repudiated the 
autobiographical note, and by the time he sat down to 
write The Romany Rye we find him fiercely denounc- 

1 Mr. Murray published Lavengro in an edition of 3000 copies in 1851, a 
second edition (incorrectly called the third) was not asked for until 1872. 
- Jenkins's Life, p. 387. 



280 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 













mY d ^ni i^ivli K iww^ 



THE ORIGINAL TITLE-PAGE OF LAVENGRO. 

From the 3Ianuscript in the possession of the Author of ^ Georr/c Borroto and his Circle. 



* LAVENGRO ' 281 

ing his critics for coming to such a conclusion. ' The 
writer,' he declares, ' never said it was an autobio- 
graphy ; never authorised any person to say it was 
one.' Which was doubtless true, in a measure. Yet 
I find among my Borrow Papers the following letter 
from Whitwell Elwin, who, writing from Booton 
Rectory on 21st October 1852, and addressing him 
as ' My dear Mr. Borrow,' said : 

1 hoped to have been able to call upon you at Yarmouth, but 
a heavy cold first, and now occupation, have interfered with my 
intentions. I daresay you have seen the mention made of your 
Lavengro in the article on Haydon in the current number of The 
Quarterly Review^ and I thought you might like to know that 
every syllable, both comment and extract, was inserted by the 
writer (a man little given to praise) of his own accord. Murray 
sent him your book, and that was all. No addition or modifica- 
tion was made by myself, and it is therefore the unbiassed judg- 
ment of a very critical reviewer. Whenever you appear again 
before the public I shall endeavour to do ample justice to your 
past and present merits, and there is one point in which you could 
aid those who understand you and your books in bringing over 
general readers to your side. I was myself acquainted with many 
of the persons you have sketched in your Lavengro, and I can 
testify to the extraordinary vividness and accuracy of the portraits. 
What I have seen, again, of yourself tells me that romantic adven- 
tures are your natural element, and I should a priori expect that 
much of your historv would be stranger than fiction. But you 
must remember that the bulk of readers have no personal acquaint- 
ance with you, or the characters you describe. The consequence 
is that they fancy there is an immensity of romance mixed up 
with the facts, and they are irritated by the inability to distin- 
guish between them. I am confident, from all I have heard, that 
this was the source of the comparatively cold reception of Laven- 
gro. I should have partaken the feeling myself if I had not had 
the means of testing the fidelity of many portions of the book, 
from which I inferred the equal fidelity of the rest. I think you 
have the remedy in your own hands, viz., by giving the utmost pos- 



282 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 



'ft»i-r |., 



i4l|fr w^iA.ii WA ilkMt p.H^^m'fA 




01/ 




i'Wftlk orftsJUtA,' 



wai'iH -j^^ll^i/^ w "^ ^(J 



W'kmi &^A. 'ill 
















i; 



,1k 



^iRv' 






FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF LAVENGRO. 

From the Manuscript in the possession of the Author of ' George Borrow and his Circle. 



' LAVENGRO ' 283 

sible matter-of-fact air to your sequel. I do not mean that you are 
to tame down the truth, but some ways of narrating a story make 
it seem more credible than others, and if you were so far to defer 
to the ignorance of the public they would enter into the full 
spirit of your rich and racy narrative. You naturally look at 
your life from your own point of view, and this in itself is the 
best ; but when you publish a book you invite the reader to par- 
ticipate in the events of your career, and it is necessary then to 
look a little at things from his point of view. As he has not 
your knowledge you must stoop to him. I throw this out for your 
consideration. My sole wish is that the public should have a 
right estimate of you, and surely you ought to do what is in your 
power to help them to it. I know you will excuse the liberty I 
take in offering this crude suggestion. Take it for what it is 
worth, but anyhow . . . 

To this letter, as we learn from Elwin's Life, ' in- 
stead of roaring like a lion,' as Elwin had expected, he 
returned quite a ' lamb-like note.' 

Read by the light in which we all judge the book 
to-day, this estimate by Elwin was about as fatuous as 
most contemporary criticisms of a masterpiece. Which 
is only to say that it is rarely given to contemporary 
critics to judge accurately of the great work that comes 
to them amid a mass that is not great. That Elwin, 
although not a good editor of Pope, was a sound critic 
of the literature of a period anterior to his own is 
demonstrated by the admirable essays from his pen that 
have been reprinted with an excellent memoir of him 
by his son.^ In this memoir we have a capital glimpse 
of our hero : 

Among the notables whom he had met was Borrow, whose 
Lavengro and Romany Rye he afterwards reviewed in 1857 under 
the title of ' Roving Life in England.' Their interview was 

1 Some XVIII . Century Men of Letters: Biographical Essays, by the Rev. 
Whitwell Elwiu, sometime Editor of The (Quarterly Review. With a Memoir 
by his son Warwick Elwirij 2 vols. John Murray, 1902. 



284 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

characteristic of both. Borrow was just then very sore with his 
snarling critics, and on some one mentioning that Elwin was a 
quai-ter'mg reviewer, he said, ' Sir, I wish you a better employ- 
ment.'' Then hastily changing the subject he called out, ' What 
party are you in the Church — Tractarian, Moderate, or Evangeli- 
cal ? I am happy to say I am the old High.'' ' I am happy to 
say I am not,'' was El win's emphatic reply. Borrow boasted of his 
proficiency in the Norfolk dialect, which he endeavoured to speak 
as broadly as possible. ' I told him,' said Elwin, ' that he had 
not cultivated it with his usual success.' As the conversation 
proceeded it became less disputatious, and the two ended by be- 
coming so cordial that they promised to visit each other. Borrow 
fulfilled his promise in the following October, when he went to 
Booton,^ and was 'full of anecdote and reminiscence,' and de- 
lighted the rectory children by singing them songs in the gypsy 
tongue. Elwin during this visit urged him to try his hand at 
an article for the Reviezv. ' Never,' he said ; ' I have made a 
resolution never to have anything to do with such a blackguard 
trade.' 

While writing of Whitwell Elwin and his associa- 
tion with Borrow, which was sometimes rather strained 
as we shall see when The Roviany Rye comes to be 
published, it is interesting to turn to El win's final im- 
pression of Borrow, as conveyed in a letter which the 
recipient^ has kindly placed at my disposal. It was 
written from Booton Rectory, and is dated 27th 
October 1893 : 

I used occasionally to meet Borrow at the house of Mr. 

* Whitwell Elwin was Rector of Booton, Norfolk — a family living — from 
1840 to his death, aged 83, on 1st January 1900. He succeeded Lockhart as 
editor of The Quarterly Review in 1853, and resigned in 1860. He was born 
in 1816, and educated at Caius College, Cambridge. Thackeray called him 
* a grandson of the late Rev. Dr. Primrose,' thereby recognising in Elwin 
many of the kindly qualities of Goldsmith's admirable creation. 

2 Mr. James Hooper, of Norwich, whose kindness in placing this and 
many other documents at my disposal I have already acknowledged. This 
letter was first published in The Sphere, December 19, 1903. 



' LAVENGRO ' 285 

Murray, his publisher, and he once stayed with me here for two 
or three days about 1855. He always seemed to me quite at ease 
'among refined people,' and I should not have ascribed his 
dogmatic tone, when he adopted it, to his resentment at finding 
himself out of keeping with his society. A spirit of self- 
assertion was engrained in him, and it was supported by a 
combative temperament. As he was proud of his bodily 
prowess, and rather given to parade it, so he took the same view 
of an argument as of a battle with fists, and thought that manli- 
ness required him to be determined and unflinching. But this, in 
my experience of him, was not his ordinary manner, which was 
calm and companionable, without rudeness of any kind, unless 
some difference occurred to provoke his pugnacity. I have wit- 
nessed instances of his care to avoid wounding feelings needlessly. 
He never kept back his opinions which, on some points, were 
shallow and even absurd ; and when his antagonist was as persis- 
tently positive as himself, he was apt to be over vehement in 
contradiction. I have heard Mr. Murray say that once in a dispute 
with Dr. Whewell at a dinner the language on both sides grew so 
fiery that Mrs. Whewell fainted. 

He told me that his composition cost him a vast amount of 
labour, that his first draughts were diffuse and crude, and that he 
wrote his productions several times before he had condensed and 
polished them to his mind. There is nothing choicer in the Eng- 
lish language than some of his narratives, descriptions, and 
sketches of character, but in his best books he did not always 
prune sufficiently, and in his last work. Wild Wales, he seemed 
to me to have lost the faculty altogether. Mr. Murray long 
refused to publish it unless it was curtailed, and Borrow, with 
his usual self-will and self-confidence, refused to retrench the 
trivialities. Either he got his own way in the end, or he revised 
his manuscript to little purpose. 

Probably most of what there was to tell of Borrow has been 
related by himself. It is a disadvantage in Lavengro and Romany 
Rye that we cannot with certainty separate fact from fiction, for 
he avowed in talk that, like Goethe, he had assumed the right in 
the interests of his autobiographical narrative to embellish it in 
places ; but the main outline, and larger part of the details, are 
the genuine record of what he had seen and done, and I can 



286 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

testify that some of his minor personages who were known to me 
in my boyhood are described with perfect accuracy. 

Two letters by Mr. Elwin to Borrow, from my 
Borrow Papers, both dated 1853 — two years after 
Laveng7^o was written, — may well have place here : 



To George Borrow, Esq. 

BooroN, Norwich, Oct. 26, 1853. 

My dear Mr. Borrow, — I shall be rejoiced to see you here, 
and I hope you will fasten a little luggage to the bow of your 
saddle, and spend as much time under my roof as you can spare. 
I am always at home. Mrs. Elwin is sure to be in the house or 
garden, and I, at the worst, not further off than the extreme 
boundary of my parish. Pray come, and that quickly. Your 
shortest road from Norwich is through Horsford, and from thence 
to the park wall of Haverland Hall, which you skirt. This will 
bring you out by a small wayside public house, well known in these 
parts, called ' The Rat-catchers.' At this point you turn sharp to 
the left, and keep the straight road till you come to a church with 
a new red brick house adjoining, which is your journey's end. 

The conclusion of your note to me is so true in sentiment, 
and so admirable in expression, that I hope you will introduce it 
into your next work. I wish it had been said in the article on 
Haydon. Cannot you strew such criticisms through the sequel to 
Lavengro ? They would give additional charm and value to the 
work. Believe me, very truly yours, W. Elwin. 

You are of course aware that if / had spoken of Lavengro 
in the Q. R. I should have said much more, but as I hoped 
for my turn hereafter, I preferred to let the passage go forth 
unadulterated. 



To George Borrow, Esq. 

BooToN Rectory, Norwich, Nov. 5, 1853. 
My dear Mr. Borrow, — You bore your mishap with a phil- 



* LAVENGRO ' 287 

osophic patience, and started with an energy which gives the best 
earnest that you would arrive safe and sound at Norwich. I was 
happy to find yesterday morning, by the arrival of your kind 
present, a sure notification that you were well home. Many 
thanks for the tea, which we drink with great zest and diligence. 
My legs are not as long as yours, nor my breath either. You 
soon made me feel that I must either turn back or be left behind, 
so I chose the former. Mrs. Elwin and my children desire their 
kind regards. They one and all enjoyed your visit. Believe me, 
very truly yours, W. Elwin. 

I have said that I possess large portions of Ijuvengro 
in manuscript. Borrow's always helpful wife, however, 
copied out the whole manuscript for the publishers, 
and this ' clean copy ' came to Dr. Knapp, who found 
even liere a few pages of very valuable writing de- 
leted, and these he has very rightly restored in Mr. 
Murray's edition of Lavengro. Why Borrow took 
so much pains to explain that his wife had copied 
Lavengro, as the following document implies, I can- 
not think. I find in his handwriting this scrap of 
paper signed by Mary Borrow, and witnessed by her 
daughter : 

Janry. 30, 1869. 
This is to certify that I transcribed The Bible in Spain, 
Lavengro, and some other works of my husband George Borrow, 
from the original manuscripts. A considerable portion of the 
transcript of Lavengro was lost at the printing-office where the 
work was printed. Mary Borrow. 

Witness : Henrietta M., daughter of Mary Borrow. 

It only remains here to state the melancholy fact 
once again that Lavengro, great work of literature 
as it is now universally acknowledged to be, was not 
' the book of the year.' The three thousand copies of 



288 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

the first issue took more than twenty years to sell, and 
it was not until 1872 that Mr. Murray resolved to issue 
a cheaper edition. The time was not ripe for the cult 
of the open road ; the zest for ' the wind on the heath ' 
that our age shares so keenly. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

A VISIT TO CORNISH KINSMEN 

If Borrow had been a normal man of letters he would 
have been quite satisfied to settle down at Oulton, in a 
comfortable home, with a devoted wife. The question 
of money was no longer to worry him. He had more- 
over a money-making gift, which made him inde- 
pendent in a measure of his wife's fortune. From The 
Bible in Spain he must have drawn a very considerable 
amount, considerable, that is, for a man whose habits 
were always somewhat penurious. Tlie Bible in Spain 
would have been followed up, were Borrow a quite 
other kind of man, by a succession of books almost 
equally remunerative. Even for one so prone to hate 
both books and bookmen there was always the wind on 
the heath, the gypsy encampment, the now famous 
' broad,' not then the haunt of innumerable trippers. 
But Borrow ever loved wandering more than writing. 
Almost immediately after his marriage — in 1840 — he 
hinted to the Bible Society of a journey to China ; a 
year later, in June 1841, he suggested to Lord Clar- 
endon that Lord Palmerston might give him a consul- 
ship : he consulted Hasfeid as to a possible livelihood 
in Berlin, and Ford as to travel in Africa. He seems 
to have endured residence at Oulton with difficulty 
during the succeeding three years, and in 1844 we find 



290 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

him engaged upon the continental travel that we have 
already recorded. In 1847 he had hopes of the consul- 
ship at Canton, but Bo wring wanted it for himself, 
and a misunderstanding over this led to an inevitable 
break of old friendship. Borrow's passionate love of 
travel was never more to be gratified at the expense of 
others. He tried hard, indeed, to secure a journey to 
the East from the British Museum Trustees, and then 
gave up the struggle. Further wanderings, which were 
many, were to be confined to Europe and indeed to 
England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. His 
first journey, however, was not at his own initiative. 
Mrs. Borrow's health was unequal to the severe winters 
at Oulton, and so the Borrows made their home at Yar- 
mouth from 1853 to 1860. During these years he gave 
his vagabond propensities full play. No year passed 
without its record of wandering. His first expedition 
was the outcome of a burst of notoriety that seems to 
have done for Borrow what the success of his Bible in 
Spain could not do — revealed his identity to his Cornish 
relations. The Bui^y Post of 17th September 1853 
recorded that Borrow had at the risk of his life saved 
at least one member of a boat's crew wrecked on the 
coast at Yarmouth : 

The moment was an awful one, when George Borrow, the well- 
known author of Lavengro and The Bible in Spain, dashed into 
the surf and saved one life, and through his instrumentality the 
others were saved. We ourselves have known this brave and 
gifted man for years, and, daring as was his deed, we have known 
him more than once to risk his life for others. We are happy to 
add that he has sustained no material injury. 

I was quite sorry to find this extract from the Bu?^y 
Post among my Borrow Papers in Mrs. Borrow's 



A VISIT TO CORNISH KINSMEN 291 

handwriting. It a little suggests that she sent the 
copy to the journal in question, or at least inspired the 
paragraph, perhaps in a letter to her friend, Dr. Gordon 
Hake, who with his family then resided at Bury St. 
Edmunds. Borrow was a perfect swimmer, and there 
is no reason to suppose but that he did act heroically.^ 
In my Borrow Papers I find in his handwriting his own 
account of the adventure : 

I was seated on Yarmouth jetty ; the weather was very 
stormy ; there came a tremendous sea, which struck the jetty, 
and made it quiver ; there was a boat on the lee-side of the jetty 
fastened hy a painter ; the surge snapped the painter like a thread, 
the boat was overset with two men in it, there was a cry, ' Tlie men 
must be drowned.' I started up from my seat on the north side 
of the jetty, and saw the boat bottom upwards, and I heard some 
people say, ' The men are under it.' I ran a little way along the 
jetty, and then jumped upon the sand ; before taking the leap I 
saw a man flung by the surge upon the shore ; he crawled up upon 
the beach, and was, I believe, lifted up upon his legs by certain 
beachmen. I had my eye upon the boat, which was now near the 
shore ; I had an idea that there was a man under it ; I flung off" 
my coat and hat, and went a little way into the sea, about parallel 
to some beachmen who were moving backwards and forwards as 
the waves advanced and receded. I now saw a man as a wave 
recoiled lying close by the boat in the reflux. I dashed forward 
and made a grip at the man, then came a tremendous wave which 
tumbled me heels over head ; being an expert diver I did not 
attempt to rise, lest I should be flung on shore. When the wave 

' It is thus that an old schoolfellow^ Dalrymple, describes the episode in a 
fragment of manuscript in the possession of Mrs. James Stuart of Carrow 
Abbey, from which I have already quoted : 

'In 1850/2/3 Borrow lived at Yarmouth; he here made rather a 
ludicrous exhibition of himself on the occasion of a wreck, when he ran into 
the sea through a full tide up to his knees, with the utmost apparent heroism, 
and retreated again as soon as he thought it might be dangerous. He 
incurred so much ridicule that he abruptly quitted the town, and I have not 
heard since of Lim.' 



292 GEORGE BOEROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

receded, I found myself near the boat ; the man was now nearer to 
the shore than myself. I believe a man or two were making 
towards him ; another wave came which overwhelmed me, and 
flung me on the shore, to which I was now making with all my 
strength. I got on my legs for one moment, when the advanced 
guard, if I may call it so, of another wave, struck me on the back, 
and laid me upon my face, but I was now quite out of danger. A 
man now came and lifted me up, as others lifted up the other man, 
who seemed quite unable to exert himself. The above is a plain 
statement of facts. I was the only person, with the exception of the 
man in distress, who was in the deep water, or who confronted the 
billows, which were indeed monstrous, but which I cared little for, 
being, as I said before, an expert diver. Had I been alone the 
result of the affair would have been much the same ; as it is, after 
the last wave I could easily have dragged the man up upon the 
beach. I am willing to give to the beachmen whatever credit is 
due to them ; I am anxious to believe that one of them was once 
up to his middle in water, but truth compels me to state that I 
never saw one of them up to his knees. I received very uncivil 
language from one of them, but every species of respect and sym- 
pathy from the genteel part of the spectators. A gentleman, I 
believe from Norwich, and a policeman, attended me in a cab to 
my lodgings, where they undressed and dressed me. The kindness 
of these two individuals I shall never forget. 

In any case this adventure had exceptional publicity. 
For example Mr. Robert Cooke of John Murray's firm 
wrote to Mrs. Borrow on 13th October 1853 to say that 
while travelling abroad he had read in Galignanis 
Messe?iger an account of his friend Lavengro's ' daring 
and heroic act in rescuing so many from a watery 
grave.' ' I wish they had all been critics,' he adds ; ' he 
would have done just the same, and they might perhaps 
have shown their gratitude when they got among his 
inky waves of literature.' 

More than this, the paragraph in the Bury St. 
Edmunds newspaper was copied into the Plymouth 



A VISIT TO CORNISH KINSMEN 293 

Mail, and was there read by the Borrows of Cornwall, 
who had heard nothing of their relative, Thomas 
Borrow, the army captain and his family, for fifty years 
or more. One of Borrow's cousins by marriage, 
Robert Taylor of Penquite, invited him to his father's 
homeland, and Borrow accepted, glad, we may be sure, 
of any excuse for a renewal of his wanderings. And 
so on the 23rd of December 1853 Borrow made his 
way from Yarmouth to Plymouth by rail, and thence 
walked twenty miles to Liskeard, where quite a little 
party of Borrow's cousins were present to greet him. 
The Borrow family consisted of Henry Borrow of 
Looe Doun, the father of Mrs. Taylor, William 
Borrow of Trethinnick, Thomas Nicholas and Eliza- 
beth Borrow, all first cousins, except Anne Taylor. 
Anne, talking to a friend, describes Borrow on this visit 
better than any one else has done : 

A fine tall man of about six feet three ; well-proportioned and 
not stout ; able to walk five miles an hour successively ; rather 
florid face without any hirsute appendages; hair white and soft; 
eyes and eyebrows dark ; good nose and very nice mouth ; well- 
shaped hands ; — altogether a person you would notice in a 
crowd. ^ 

Dr. Knapp possessed two ' notebooks ' of this Cornish 
tour. Borrow stayed at Penquite with his cousins 
from 24th December to 9th January, then he went 
on a walking tour to Land's End, through Truro and 
Penzance ; he was back at Penquite from 26th January 
to 1st February, and then took a week's tramp to 
Tintagel, King Arthur's Castle, and Pentire. Naturally 
he made inquiries into the language, already extinct, but 
spoken within the memory of the older inhabitants. 

^ Knapp's Life, vol. ii. p. 97. Letter from Mrs. Robert Taylor to Mrs. 
Wilkey. 



294 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

' My relations are most excellent people,' he wrote to his 
wife from London on his way back, ' but I could not 
understand more than half of what they said.' 

I have only one letter to Mrs. Borrow written 
during this tour : 

To Mrs. George Borrow 

Penquite, 21 th Janry. 1864. 

My dear Carketa, — I just Avrite you a line to inform you 
that I have got back safe here from the Land's End. I have 
received your two letters, and hope you received mine from the 
Land's End, It is probable that I shall yet visit one or two 
places before I leave Cornwall. I am very much pleased with the 
country. When you receive this if you please to write a line hy 
return of post I think you may ; the Trethinnick people wish me 
to stay with them for a day or two. When you see the Cobbs 
pray remember me to them; I am sorry Horace has lost his aunt, 
he will miss her. Love to Hen. Ever yours, dearest, 

G. Borrow, 

(Keep this.) 

One of Borrow's biographers, Mr. Walling, has 
given us the best account of that journey through 
Cornwall,^ and his explanation of why Borrow did not 
write the Cornish book that he caused to be advertised 
in a fly-leaf of The Romany Rye, by the discouragement 
arising out of the dire failure of that book, may be 
accepted.^ Borrow would have made a beautiful book 

* George Borrow, The Man and His Work. By R. A. J. Walling. Cassell, 
1908. 

^ It is not generally known that not less than eleven books by Borrow 
were advertised in the first edition of The Romany Rye in 1857, of which only 
two were published in his lifetime : 

1. Celtic Bards, Chiefs, and Kings. 2 volumes. 

2. Wild Wales : Its People, Language, and Scenery. 2 volumes. 

3. Songs of Europe, or Metrical Translations from all the European 
Languages. 2 volumes. 

4. KcBmpe Viser. Songs about Giants and Heroes. 2 volumes. 



A VISIT TO CORNISH KINSMEN 295 

upon Cornwall. Even the title, Penquite and Peniyre ; 
or. The Head of the Forest and the Headland, has 
music in it. And he had in these twenty weeks made 
himself wonderfully well acquainted not only with the 
topography of the principality, but with its folklore and 
legend. The gulf that ever separated the Borrow of 
the notebook and of tlie unprepared letter from the 
Borrow of the finished manuscript was extraordinary, 
and Ave may deplore with Mr. Walling the absence of 
this among Borrow's many unwritten books. 

Borrow was back in Yarmouth at the end of 
February 1854 — he had not fled the country as 
Dalrymple had suggested — but in July he was off again 
for his great tour in Wales, in which he was accompanied 
by his wife and daughter. Of that tour we must treat 
in another and later chapter, for Wild Wales was not 
published until 1862. The year following his great 
tour in AVales he went on a trip to the Isle of Man. 

5. The Turkish Jester. 1 volume. 

6. Penquite and Pentyre ; or, The Head of the Forest and the Headland. 
A Book on Cornwall. 2 volumes. 

7. Russian Popular Tales. 1 volume. 

8. The Sleeping Bard. 1 volume. 

9. Norman Skalds, Kings, and Earls. 2 volumes. 

10. The Death of Balder. 1 volume. 

11. Bayr Jairgey and Glion Doo. Wanderings in Search of Manx Literature. 
1 volume. 

Of these The Sleeping Bard appeared in 1860 and Wild Wales in 1862 ; and 
after Borrow's death The Turkish Jester in 1884 and The Death of Balder in 
1889. The remaining seven books have not yet been published. Their 
manuscript is partly in the Knapp Collection now in the Hispanic Society's 
possession^ partly in my Collectionj while certain fragments and the manuscript 
of Romano Lavo-Lil are in the possession of well-known Borrow enthusiasts. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

IN THE ISLE OF MAN 

The holiday which Borrow gave himself the year 
following his visit to Wales, that is to say, in Sep- 
tember 1855, is recorded in his unpublished diaries. He 
never wrote a book as the outcome of that journey, 
although he caused one to be advertised under the 
title of Bayr J air gey and Glion Doo : Wanderings in 
Search of 3Ianx Literature} Dr. Knapp possessed two 
volumes of these notebooks closely written in pencil. 
These he reproduced conscientiously in his Life, and 
indeed here we have the most satisfactory portion of his 
book, for the journal is transcribed with but little modi- 
fication, and so we have some thirty pages of genuine 
' Borrow ' that are really very attractive reading. 
Borrow, it will be remembered, learnt the Irish 
language as a mere child, much to his father's disgust. 
Although he never loved the Irish people, the Celtic 
Irish, that is to say, whose genial temperament was so 
opposed to his own, he did love the Irish language, 
which he more than once declared had incited him to 
become a student of many tongues. He never made 
the mistake into which two of his biographers have 
fallen of calling it 'Erse.' He was never an accurate 
student of the Irish language, but among Englishmen he 

* In vol. ii. of The Romany Bye, vide supra. 

296 



IN THE ISLE OF MAN 297 

led the way in the present-day interest in that tongue — 
an interest which is now so pronounced among scholars 
of many nationalities, and has made in Ireland so definite 
a revival of a language that for a time seemed to be on 
the way to extinction. Two translations from the Irish 
are to be found in his Targum published so far back as 
1835, and many other translations from the Irish poets 
were among the unpublished manuscripts that he left 
behind him. It would therefore be with peculiar interest 
that he would visit the Isle of Man which, at the begin- 
ning of the nineteenth century, was an Irish-speaking 
land, but in 1855 was at a stage when the language 
was falling fast into decay. What survived of it was 
still Irish with trifling variations in the spelling of words. 
' Cranu,' a tree, for example, had become ' Cwan,'and so 
on — although the pronunciation was apparently much 
the same. When the tall, white-haired EngMshman 
talked to the older inhabitants who knew something 
of the language they were delighted. ' Mercy upon 
us,' said one old woman, ' I believe, sir, you are of the 
old Manx !' Borrow was actually wandering in search 
of Manx literature, as the title of the book that he 
announced implied. He inquired about the old songs 
of the island, and of everything that survived of its 
earlier language. Altogether Borrow must have had a 
good time in thus following his favourite pursuit. 

But Dr. Knapp's two notebooks, which are so largely 
taken up with these philological matters, are less human 
than a similar notebook that has fallen into my hands. 
This is a long leather pocket-book, in which, under the 
title of ' Expedition to the Isle of Man,' w^e have, 
written in pencil, a quite vivacious account of his adven- 
tures. It records that Borrow and his wife and daughter 
set out through Bury to Peterborough, Rugby, and 



298 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Liverpool. It tells of the admiration with which 
Peterborough's * noble cathedral ' inspired him. Liver- 
pool he calls a • London in miniature ' : 

Strolled about town with my wife and Henrietta ; wonderful 
docks and quays, where all the ships of the world seemed to be 
gathered — all the commerce of the world to be carried on ; St. 
George's Crescent ; noble shops ; strange people walking about, an 
Herculean mulatto, for example ; the old china shop ; cups with 
Chinese characters upon them ; an horrible old Irishwoman with 
naked feet ; Assize Hall a noble editice. 

The party left Liverpool on 20th August, and 
Borrow, when in sight of the Isle of ^Nlan, noticed a 
lofty ridge of mountains rising to the clouds : 

Entered into conversation with two of the crew — ^lanx 
sailors — about the j\Ianx language ; one, a very tall man, said he 
knew only a very little of it as he was born on the coast, but that 
his companion, who came from the interior, knew it well ; said it 
was a mere gibberish. This I denied, and said it was an ancient 
language, and that it was like the Irish ; his companion, a shorter 
man. in shirt sleeves, with a sharp, eager countenance, now opened 
his mouth and said I was right, and said that I was the only 
gentleman whom he had ever heard ask questions about the Manx 
language. I spoke several Irish words which they understood. 

When he had landed he continued his investiga- 
tions, asking every peasant he met the ^lanx for this 
or that English word : 

*Are you Manx?" said I. 'Yes.' he replied, 'I am Manx.' 
' And what do you call a river in ^lanx r " 'A river,' he replied. 
' Can you speak Manx ? ' I demanded. ' Yes,' he replied, * I speak 
Manx." ' And you call a river a river ? ' ' Yes,' said he, ' I do.' 
* You don't call it owen ? ' said I. • I do not,' said he. I passed 
on, and on the other side of the bridge went for some time along 
an avenue of trees, passing by a stone water-mill, till I came to a 
public-house on the left hand. Seeing a woman looking out of 



IN THE ISLE OF MAN 299 

the window, I asked her to what place the road led. "To Castle- 
town,' she replied. ' And what do you call the river in Manx ? "■ 
said I. 'We call it an owen/ said she. ' l?o I thought," I replied, 
and after a little further discourse returned, iii; the night was now 
coming fast on. 

One man whom Borrow asked if there were any 
poets in ]Man replied that he did not believe there were, 
that the last Manx poet had died some time ago at 
Kirk Conoshine. and this man had translated Parnell's 
Hermit beautifully, and the translation had been printed. 
He inquii'ed about the Runic Stones, which he continu- 
ally transcribed. Under date Thursday, 30th August, 
we find the following : 

This day rear I ascended Snowdon, and this morning, which 
is very tine. I propose to start on an expedition to Castletown 
and to return by Feel. 

\'ery gladly would I follow Borrow more in detail 
through this interesting holiday by means of his diary ,^ 
but it would make my book too long. As he had his 
wife and daughter with him there are no letters by him 
from the island. But wherever Borrow went he met 
people who were interested in him. and so I find the 
following letter among his Papers, which he received a 
year after his return : 



To George Borrow, Esq. 

3 Albert Terrace, DocGi^is^ 11 February 1856. 
My dear Sir, — If experience on report has made you 
acquainted with the nature of true Celtic indolence and pro- 
crastination you will be prepared to learn, without surprise, that 

' The whole of this diary, which is the best orie-inal work that Borrow left 
behind him unpublished, will be issued in my edition of The Collected ^yorks. 



300 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

your Runic stone still remains unerected.^ In vain have I called 
time after time upon the clerk of Braddan — in vain have I ex- 
postulated. Nothing could *! get but fair words and fair promises. 
First he was very rheumatic, having, according to his own account, 
contracted his dolorous aches in the course of that five-hours'* job 
under your superintendence in the steeple, where, it seems, a 
merciless wind is in the habit of disporting itself. Then the 
weather was so unfavourable, then his wife was ailing, etc., etc. 
On Saturday, however, armed with your potent note, I made 
another attack, and obtained a promise that the stone should be 
in its right place on that day of the week following. So I await 
the result. My own private impression is that if we see the 
achievement complete by Easter there will be much cause for 
thankfulness. 

Many thanks for The Illustrated News ; I read the article with 
great interest, and subsequently studied the stone itself as well as 
its awkward position in its nook in the steeple would allow me. 
Your secret, I need hardly say, was faithfully kept till the receipt 
of the news assured me that it need be a secret no longer. I may 
just mention that the clerk thinks that the sovereign you left will 
be quite enough to defray the expenses. I think so too ; at least if 
there be anything more it cannot be worth mentioning, l^hough 
no Manxman myself still I shall take the liberty of thanking you 
in the name of Mona — may I not add in the name of Antiquarian 
Science too — for your liberality in this matter. Mrs. Borrow, I 
trust, is convalescent by this time, and Miss Clarke well. With 
our united kind regards, believe me, my dear Sir, very sincerely 
yours, S. W. Wanton. 

And even three years later we find that Borrow has 
not forgotten the friends of that Manx holiday. This 
letter is from the Vicar of Malew in acknowledgment 
of a copy of The Romany Rye published in the interval : 

* Borrow found the stone had fallen, and he left money for its re-erection. 
He copied this stone on 13th September 1855, noting in his diary that 
Henrietta sketched the church while he copied and translated the inscription 
which ran as follows — Thorleifr Nitki raised this Cross to Fiak, son of his 
brother's son, the date being 1084 or 1194 a.d. 



IN THE ISLE OF MAN 301 



To George Borrow, Esq. 

Malew Vicarage, Baixasam-a, Isle of Man, 27 Jany. 1859. 
My dear Sir, — I return you my most hearty thanks for your 
most handsome present of Romany Rye, and no less handsome 
letter relative to your tour in the Isle of Man and the literature 
of the Manx. Both I value very highly, and from both I shall 
derive useful hints for my introduction to the new edition of the 
Manx Graynmar. I hope you will have no objection to my 
quoting a passage or two from the advertisement of your forth- 
coming book ; and if I receive no intimation of your dissent, I 
shall take it for granted that I have your kind permission. The 
whole notice is so apposite to my purpose, and would be so in- 
teresting to every Manxman, that I would fain insert the whole 
bodily, did the Author and the limits of an Introduction permit. 
The Grammar will, I think, go to press in March next. It is to 
be published under the auspices of ' The Manx Society,' instituted 
last year ' for the publication of National documents of the Isle of 
Man.' As soon as it is printed I hope to beg the favour of your 
acceptance of a copy. — I am, my dear Sir, your deeply obliged 
humble servant, William Gill. 

The letter from Mr. Wanton directs us to the 
issue of The Illustrated I^ondon News for 8th December 
1855, where we find the following note on the Isle of 
Man, obviously contributed to that journal by Borrow, 
together with an illustration of the Runic Stone, which 
is also reproduced here : 



ANCIENT RUNIC STONE, RECENTLY FOUND IN THE 

ISLE OF MAN 

For upwards of seventy years a stone which, as far as it could be 
discerned, had the appearance of what is called a Danish cross, has 
been known to exist in the steeple of Kirk Braddan, Isle of Man. 
It was partly bedded in mortar and stones above the lintel of a 



302 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

doorway leading to a loft above the gallery. On the 19th of 
November it was removed from its place under the superin- 
tendence of an English gentleman who had been travelling about 
the island. It not only proved to be a Northern cross, but a 
Runic one ; that is, it bore a Runic inscription. As soon as the 
stone had been taken out of the wall, the gentleman in question 
copied the inscription and translated it, to the best of his ability, 
in the presence of the church clerk who had removed the stone. 



J 



-■s§m0MA&!A—~.. 




'''%^'k^ 



RUNIC STONE FROM THE ISLE OF MAN 



The Runes were in beautiful preservation, and looked as fresh as 
if they had just come out of the workshop of Orokoin Gaut. 
Unfortunately the upper part of the cross was partly broken, so 
that the original inscription was not entire. In the inscription, as 
it is, the concluding word is mutilated ; in its original state it was 
probably ' sonr,"* son ; the Runic character which answers to s 
being distinct, and likewise the greater part of one which stands 
for o. Yet there is reason for believing that sonr was not the 
concluding word of the original, but the penultimate, and that 
the original terminated with some Norwegian name : we will 
suppose ' Olf.' The writing at present on the stone is to this 
effect : 

OTR. RISTI. KROS. THUNU. AFT. I- RUKA 

FATHOR. SIN. IN. THORWIAORI. S . . . (sONR OLFs) 

OTR RAISED THIS CROSS TO FRUKI HIS FATHER, 

THE THORWIAORI, SO(n OF OLf). 

The names Otr and Fruki have never before been found on any 
of the Runic stones in the Isle of Man. The words In . . . 



IN THE ISLE OF MAN 303 

Thorwiaori, which either denote the place where the individual 
to whom they relate lived, or one of his attributes or peculiar- 
ities, will perhaps Hing some light on the words In . . . Aruthur, 
which appear on the beautiful cross which stands nearly opposite 
the door of Kirk Braddan. 

The present cross is curiously ornamented. The side which 
we here present to the public bears two monsters, perhaps in- 
tended to represent dragons, tied with a single cord, which passes 
round the neck, and body of one whose head is slightly averted, 
whilst, though it passes round the body of the other, it leaves the 
neck free. Little at present can be said about the other side of 
the stone, which is still in some degree covered with the very hard 
mortar in which it was found lying. The gentleman of whom we 
have already spoken, before leaving the island, made arrangements 
for placing the stone beside the other cross, which has long been 
considered one of the principal ornaments of the beautiful church- 
yard of Braddan. 



CHAPTER XXVIIl 

OULTON BROAD AND YARMOUTH 

George Borrow wandered far and wide, but he always 
retraced his footsteps to East Anglia, of which he was 
so justly proud. From his marriage in 1840 until his 
death in 1881 he lived twenty-seven years at Oulton or 
at Yarmouth. ' It is on sand alone that the sea strikes 
its true music/ Borrow once remarked, 'Norfolk sand' — 
and it was in the waves and on the sands of the 
Norfolk coast that Borrow spent the happiest hours 
of his restless life. Oulton Cottage is only about two 
miles from Lowestoft, and so, walking or driving, these 
places were quite near one another. But both are in 
Suffolk. Was it because Yarmouth — ten miles distant 
— is in Norfolk that it was always selected for seaside 
residence? I suspect that the careful Mrs. Borrow 
found a wider selection of ' apartments ' at a moderate 
price. In any case the sea air of Yarmouth was good 
for his wife, and the sea bathing was good for him, and 
so we find that husband and wife had seven separate 
residences at Yarmouth during the years of Oulton 
life.^. But Oulton was ever to be Borrow's head- 
quarters, even though between 1860 and 1874 he had a 
house in London. Borrow was thirty-seven years of 

^ They lived first at 169 King Street, then at two addresses unknown, 
then successively at 87, 38 and 39 Camperdown Terrace, their last address 
was 28 Trafalgar Place. 



304 




A HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED PORTRAIT OF GEORGE BORROW 

Taken in the garden of Mrs. Simnis Reeve of Norwich in 1848. This is the 
only photograph of George Borrow extant, although two paintings of him exist, 
one by Henry Wyndham Phillips, which forms the frontispiece of this volume, 
taken in 1843, anid an earlier portrait by his brother John, which will be found 
facing page 32. 



OULTON BROAD AND YARMOUTH 305 

age when he settled down at Oulton. He was, he tells 
us in 7Vie Romany Rye, ' in tolerably easy circumstances 
and willing to take some rest after a life of labour.' 
Their home was a cottage on the Broad, for the Hall, 
which was also Mrs. Borrow's property, was let on 
lease to a farmer.^ The cottage, however, was an ex- 
tremely pleasant residence with a lawn running down 
to the river. A more substantial house has been built 
on this site since Borrow's day. The summer-house 
is generally assumed to be the same, but has certainly 
been reroofed since the time when Henrietta Clarke 
drew the picture of it that is reproduced in this 
book. Probably the whole summer-house is new, 
but at any rate the present structure stands on the 
site of the old one. Here Borrow did his work, 
wrote and wrote and wrote, until he had, as he said, 
'Mountains of manuscripts.' Here first of all he 
completed The Zincali (1841), commenced in Seville; 
then he wrote or rather arranged I'/ie Bible in Spain 
(1843), and then at long intervals, diversified by ex- 
tensive travel holidays, he wrote Lavengro (1851), The 
Ro7uany Rye (1857), and Wild Wales (I860),— these 
are the five books and their dates that we most as- 

^ Borrow's letters were frequently addressed to Oulton Hall, but he never 
lived here. Oulton Hall was the name given to the farm house which went 
with Oulton Hall Farm. ' Old inhabitants/ writes Mr. William Mackay of 
Oulton Broad to me, 'remember that seventy years ago it was occupied by 
Skepper, who was succeeded by Grimmer, who was succeeded by Smith.' 
' I can find no one,' continues Mr. Mackay, ' who recollects old Mrs. Borrow 
lodging at the farm house. But what more likely.'' And it was charac- 
teristic of Borrow — don't you think i^ — that he should holdout "Oulton Hall" 
as an address to those who were not likely to visit him.' When Mrs, Borrow, 
senior, was persuaded to leave Willow Lane, Norwich, for Oulton, her sou 
took lodgings for her at the ' Hall,' and here she died. Very commonplace 
farm houses in East Anglia are frequently called ' halls,' to the great 
amazement of visitors from other counties, although there are some very 
noble ones, as, for example, Kirkstead, Swiueshead, Parham and Dalliug. 

U 



306 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

sociate with Borrovv's sojourn at Oulton. When JVild 
Wales was published he had removed to London. 
Borrow brought with him to Oulton, as we have said, a 
beautiful Arabian horse, Sidi Habismilk, and a Jewish 
servant, Hayim Ben Attar. The horse remained to de- 
light the neighbourhood. It followed Borrow like a dog 
when he was not riding it. The Jew had soon had enough 
of this rural retreat and sighed for a sunnier clime. 
Thus, under date 1843, 1 find among my Borrow Papers 
the following letter to a firm of shipbrokers : 

To Messrs. Nickols and Marshal, I^ondon. 

■i^/i J«/y 1843. 
Gentlemen, — Having received a communication from Liverpool 
from Harry Pahner, Esq., stating that you are his agents in 
London, and that as such he has requested you to communicate 
with us relative to a passage required for a man sent to Cadiz or 
Gibraltar, I shall as briefly as possible state the particulars. 
Mr. Palmer names £1 or i?8 as the lowest which he thinks it will 
cost us to get him to Gibraltar or Cadiz. This we consider is a 
larse sum when it is to be remembered that he is to fare as the 
ship's crew fare, and with the exception of a berth to lie down 
in, no difference is required at this beautiful season of the year. 
I must here state as an excuse for the above remark that this man 
came to England at his own particular desire. I have been at 
much expense about him. He has had good wages, but now that 
he wants to get back to his own country the whole expense is 
thrown upon me, as he has saved no money, and we wish it to be 
clearly understood by the captain who will take him that when he 
is once off from England and his passage paid that we will be 
responsible for no further expense whatever. We do not want to 
get him to Tangier, as we shall put money in his pocket which 
will enable him to pay for a passage across if he wishes to go 
there, but we will pay only to Gibraltar or Cadiz. A steam 
vessel sails from Yarmouth bridge every Wednesday and Friday. 
This will be the most direct and safe way to send him to London, 



OULTON BROAD AND YARMOUTH 307 

and then trouble you to have him met at the steamer and con- 
veyed to the ship at once in which he is to have his passage. All 
therefore that remains to be done is to trouble you to give us a 
few days' notice with time to get him up per Yarmouth steamer. 
I beg to thank you for the willingness you expressed to Mr. Palmer 
to assist me in this affair by getting as cheap a passage as you can 
and seeing him on board and the passage not paid till the ship 
sails. You no doubt can quite understand our anxious feelings 
upon the subject from your connection with shipping, and con- 
sequently knowing what foreigners generally are. — I am, Sir, Your 
obedient servant, G. H. Borrow.^ 

Then we have the following document with which 
his cautious master provided hhnself : 

A Statement of Hayim Ben Attar previous to his leaving 
England. 

I declare that it was my own wish to come to England with 
my master G. H. Borrow, who offered to send me to my own 
country before he left Spain. That I have regularly received the 
liberal wages he agreed to give me from the first of my coming to 
him. That I have been treated justly and kindly by him during 
my stay in England, and that I return to my country at my own 
wish and request, and at my master's expense. To this statement, 
which I declare to be true, I sign my name. — Hayim Ben Attar. 

Declared before me this 9 of August 1843. 

W. M. Hammond, Magistrate for Great Yarmouth. 

* This was in reply to a letter from Mr. Harry Palmer whicli ran as 
follows : — ' When in London on Thursday I saw the captain and brothers of 
several vessels bound to Gibraltar and Cadiz, and the passage money required 
will be about £10. The Warhlington will leave to-morrow, the latter part of 
next week, and should you decide upon sending your servant I have re- 
quested Messrs. Nickols and Marshal to attend to any communication you 
may make to them, who will do their utmost to get him out at the least 
possible expense, and pay the passage money upon his leaving England, and 
make arrangements with the captain for his passage to Tangier. As Gibraltar 
would be as convenient as Cadiz, have little doubt Messrs. Nickols and Co. 
would be able to get him out for £7 or £8. I have a vessel now loading in 
this port for Barcelona, to which port (if you could send him to Liverpool) 
should be happy to take him and then send him forward to his destination.' 



308 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

I find a letter among my Papers which bears no 
name, and is probably a draft. It contains an interest- 
ing reference to Hayim Ben Attar, and hence I give 
it here : 

Sir, — I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your 
letter of the 17th inst., which ray friend, Mr. Murray, has just 
forwarded to me. I am afraid that you attribute to me powers 
and information which I am by no means conscious of possessing ; 
I should feel disposed to entertain a much higher opinion of 
myself than I at present do could I for a moment conceive myself 
gifted with the talent of inducing any endeavour to dismiss from 
his mind a theory of the reasonableness of which appears to him 
obvious. Nevertheless, as you do me the honour of asking my 
opinion with respect to the theory of Gypsies being Jews by 
origin, I hasten to answer to the following effect. I am not 
prepared to acknowledge the reasonableness of any theory which 
cannot be borne out by the slightest proof. Against the theory 
may be offered the following arguments which I humbly consider 
to be unanswerable. The Gypsies differ from the Jews in feature 
and complexion — in whatever part of the world you find the 
Gypsy you recognise him at once by his features which are 
virtually the same — the Jew likewise has a peculiar countenance 
by which at once he may be distinguished as a Jew, but which 
would certainly prevent the probability of his being considered as 
a scion of the Gypsy stock — in proof of which assertion I can 
adduce the following remarkable instance. 

I have in my service a Jew, a native of Northern Africa. Last 
summer I took him Avith me to an encampment of Romanies or 
Gypsies near my home at Oulton in Suffolk. I introduced him to 
the Chief, and said, Are ye not dui patos (two brothers). The 
Gypsy passed his hand over the Jew''s face and stared him in the 
eyes, then turning to me he answered — we are not two brothers, 
not two brothers — this man is no rom — I believe him to be a Jew. 
Now this Gypsy has been in the habit of seeing German and 
English Jews who must have been separated from their African 
brothers for a term of 1700 years — yet he recognised the Jew of 
Troy for what he was — a Jew — and without hesitation declared 
that he was not a rom ; the Jews, therefore, and the Gypsies have 



OULTON BROAD AND YARMOUTH 309 

each their peculiar and distinctive features, which disprove the 
impossibility of their having been originally the same people. — 
Your obedient servant, George Borrow. 

I find also in this connection a letter from Tangier 
addressed to ' Mr. H. George Borrow ' under date 
2nd November 1847. It tells us that the worthy 
Jew longs once again to see the ' dear face ' of his 
master. Since he left his service he has married 
and has two sons, but he is anxious to return to 
England if that same master will find him work. We 
can imagine that by this time Borrow had had enough 
of Hayim Ben Attar, and that his answer was not 
encouraging. 

But by far the best glimpses of Borrow during 
these years of Suffolk life are those contained in a 
letter contributed by his friend, Elizabeth Harvey, 
to The jEaste^m Daily Press of Norwich over the 
initials 'E.H.'-/ 

When I knew Mr. Borrow he lived in a lovely cottage whose 
garden sloped down to the edge of Oulton Broad. He had a 
wooden room built on the very margin of the water, where he had 
many strange old books in various languages. I remember he once 
put one before me, telling me to read it. ' Oh, I can't,' 1 replied. 
He said, ' You ought, it 's your own language.' It was an old 
Saxon book. He used to spend a great deal of his time in this 
room writing, translating, and at times singing strange words in a 
stentorian voice, while passers-by on the lake would stop to listen 
with astonishment and curiosity to the singular sounds. He was 
6 feet 3 inches, a splendid man, with handsome hands and feet. 

^ The Eastern Dailij Press, 1st October 1892. The Harveys were great 
friends of Borrow, and he left one of them co-executor with Mrs. MacOubrey 
of his estate. Miss Harvey's impressions make an interesting contrast to 
those of Miss Frances Power Cobbe. I have to thank Mr. A. Cozens-Hardy, 
the editor of The Eastern Daily Press, for courteously furnishing me with 
copies of these letters, and for giving me permission to use them here. 



310 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

He wore neither whiskers, beard, nor moustache. His features were 
very handsome, but his eyes were peculiar, being round and rather 
small, but very piercing, and now and then fierce. He would 
sometimes sing one of his Romany songs, shake his fist at me and 
look quite wild. Then he would ask, ' Aren't you afraid of me ? ' 
' No, not at all,' I would say. Then he would look just as gentle 
and kind, and say, ' God bless you, I would not hurt a hair of your 
head.' He was an expert swimmer, and used to go out bathing, 
and dive under water an immense time. On one occasion he was 
bathing with a friend, and after plunging in nothing was seen of 
him for some while. His friend began to be alarmed, when he 
heard Borrow's voice a long way off exclaiming, ' There, if that 
had been written in one of my books they would have said it was 
a lie, wouldn't they?' He was very fond of animals, and the 
animals were fond of him. He would o-o for a walk with two doffs 
and a cat following him. The cat would go a quarter of a mile 
or so and then turn back home. He delighted to go for long walks 
and enter into conversation with any one he might meet on the 
road, and lead them into histories of their lives, belongings, and 
experiences. When they used some word peculiar to Norfolk (or 
Suffolk) countrymen he would say, 'Why, that 's a Danish word.' 
By and by the man would use another peculiar expression, ' Why, 
that's Saxon'; a little later on another, 'Why, that's French.' 
And he would add, ' Why, what a wonderful man you are to speak 
so many languages.' One man got very angry, but Mr. Borrow 
was quite unconscious that he had given any offence. He spoke a 
great number of languages, and at the Exhibition of 1851 , whither 
he went with his stepdaughter, he spoke to the different foreigners 
in their own language, until his daughter saw some of them whis- 
pering together and looking as if they thouglit he was ' uncanny,' 
and she became alarmed and drew him away. He, however, did 
not like to hear the English language adulterated with the intro- 
duction of foreign words. If his wife or friends used a foreign 
word in conversation, he would say, ' What's that, trying to come 
over me with strange languages.' 

I have gone for many a walk with him at Oulton. He used to 
go on, singing to himself or quite silent, quite forgetting me until 
he came to a high hill, when he would turn round, seize my hand, 
and drag me up. Then he would sit down and enjoy the prospect. 



OULTON BROAD AND YARMOUTH 311 

He was a great lover of nature, and very fond of his trees. He quite 
fretted if, by some mischance, he lost one. He did not shoot or 
hunt. He rode his Arab at times, but walking was his favourite 
exercise. He was subject to fits of nervous depression. At times 
also he suffered from sleeplessness, when he would get up and walk 
to Norwich (25 miles), and return the next night recovered. His 
fondness for the gypsies has been noticed. At Oulton he used to 
allow them to encamp in his grounds, and he would visit them, 
with a friend or alone, talk to them in Romany, and sing Romany 
songs. He was very fond of ghost stories and believed in the super- 
natural. He was keenly sympathetic with any one who was in 
trouble or suffering. He was no man of business and very guile- 
less, and led a very harmless, quiet life at Oulton, spending his 
evenings at home with his wife and step-daughter, generally read- 
ing all the evening. He was very hospitable in his own home, and 
detested meanness. He was moderate in eating and drinking, took 
very little breakfast, but ate avery great quantity at dinner, and then 
had only a draught of cold water before going to bed. He wrote 
much in praise of ' strong ale,' and was very fond of good ale, of 
whose virtue he had a great idea. Once I was speaking of a lady 
who was attached to a gentleman, and he asked, ' Well, did he 
make her an offfer .?"" ' No,' I said. ' Ah,' he exclaimed, ' if she had 
given him some good ale he would.' But although he talked so 
much about ale I never saw him take much. He was very 
temperate, and would eat what was set before him, often not think- 
ing of what he was doing, and he never refused what was offered 
him. He took much pleasure in music, especially of a light and 
lively character. My sister would sing to him, and I played. 
One piece he seemed never to tire of hearing. It was a polka, 
'The Redowa,' I think, and when I had finished he used to say, 

' Play that again, E .' He was very polite and gentlemanly 

in ladies' society, and we all liked liim. 

It is refreshing to read this tribute, from which I 
have omitted nothing salient, because a very disagree- 
able Borrow has somehow grown up into a tradition. I 
note in reading some of the reviews of Dr. Knapp's 
Life thai he is charged, or half-charged, with suppressing 



312 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

facts, 'because they do not reflect credit upon the 
subject of his biography.' Now, there were really no 
facts to suppress. Borrow was at times a very irritable 
man, he was a very self-centred one. His egotism 
might even be pronounced amazing by those who had 
never met an author. But those of us who have, 
recognise that with very few exceptions they are all 
egotists, although some conceal it from the unob- 
servant more deftly than others. Let me recall Mr. 
Arthur Christopher Benson's verses on 'My Poet.' 

He came ; I met him face to face, 

And shrank amazed, dismayed ; I saw 

No patient depth, no tender grace, 
No prophet of the eternal law. 

But weakness, fretting to be great. 
Self-consciousness with sidelong eye. 

The impotence that dares not wait 
For honour, crying ' This is I.' 

The tyrant of a sullen hour, 

He frowned away our mild content ; 
And insight only gave him power 

To see the slights that were not meant.^ 

Many successful and unsuccessful authors, living 
and dead, are here described, and Borrow was far from 
one of the worst. He was quarrelsome, and I rather 
like him for that. If he was a good hater he was also 
a very loyal friend, as we find Miss Elizabeth Harvey 
and, in after years, Mr. Theodore Watts -Dunton 
testifying. Moreover, Borrow had a grievance of a 
kind that has not often befallen a man of his literary 
power. He had written a great book in Lavengro, and the 

1 The Poems of A. C. Benson, p. 213 : Published by John Lane, 1909. 



OULTON BROAD AND YARMOUTH 313 

critics and the public refused to recognise that it was a 
great book. Many authors of power have died young and 
unrecognised ; but recognition has usually come to those 
men of genius who have lived into middle age. It 
did not come to Borrow. He had therefore a right to 
be soured. This sourness found expression in many 
ways. Borrow, most sound of churchmen, actually 
quarrelled with his vicar over the tempers of their 
respective dogs. Both the vicar, the Rev. Edwin 
Proctor Denniss, and his parishioner wrote one another 
acrid letters. Here is Borrow's parting shot : 

Circumstances over which Mr. Borrow has at present no con- 
trol will occasionally bring him and his family under the same roof 
with Mr, Denniss ; that roof, however, is the roof of the House of 
God, and the prayers of the Church of England are wholesome 
from whatever mouth they may proceed.^ 

Surely that is a kind of quarrel we have all had in 
our day, and we think ourselves none the less virtuous 
in consequence. Then there was Borrow's very natural 
ambition to be made a magistrate of Suffolk. He tells 
Mr. John Murray in 1842 that he has caught a bad cold 
by getting up at night in pursuit of poachers and 
thieves. ' A terrible neighbourhood this,' he adds, * not 
a magistrate dare do his duty.' And so in the next 
year he wrote again to the same correspondent : 

Present my compliments to Mr. Gladstone, and tell him that 
the Bible in Spain will have no objection to becoming one of the 
' Great Unpaid,'' 

Mr. Gladstone, although he had admired The Bible 
in Spain, and indeed had even suggested the modifica- 
tion of one of its sentences, did nothing. Lockhart, 

^ Dr. Knapp's Life, vol. ii. p. 41. 



314 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Lord Clarendon, and others who were appHed to were 
equally powerless or indifferent. Borrow never got 
his magistracy. To-day no man of equal eminence in 
literature could possibly have failed of so slight an 
ambition. ^Moreover, Borrow wanted to be a J.P., not 
from mere snobbery as many might, but for a definite, 
practical object. I am afraid he would not have made 
a very good magistrate, and perhaps inquiry had made 
that clear to the authorities. Lastly, there was 
Borrow's quarrel with the railway which came through 
his estate. He had thoughts of removing to Bury, 
where Dr. Hake lived, or to Troston Hall, once the 
home of the interesting Capell Lofft. But he 
was not to leave Oulton. In intervals of holidays, 
journeys, and of sojourn in Yarmouth it was to remain 
his home to the end. In 1849 his mother joined him 
at Oulton. She had resided for thirty-three years at 
the Willow Lane Cottage. She was now seventy-seven 
years of age. She lived-on near her son as a tenant of 
his tenant at Oulton Hall until her death nine years 
later, dying in 1858 in her eighty-seventh year. 
She lies buried in Oulton Churchyard, with a tomb 
thus inscribed : 

Sacred to the memoiy of Ann Borrow, widow of Captain 
Thomas Borrow. She died on the 16th of August 1858, aged 
eighty-six years and seven months. She was a good wife and a 
good mother. 

During these years at Oulton we have many 
glimpses of Borrow. Dr. Jessopp, for example, has 
recorded in The Athenceiun^ news]^a.-peT his own hero- 

^ The Athenorum , July 8. 1893. Dr. Jessopp's feeliug for Borrow was 
niucli more kindly then than when he supplied to the London Daily Chronicle 
of 30th April 1900 an article which had better not have been written. 



OULTOX BROAD AND YARMOUTH 315 

worship for the author of Lavciigro, whom he was 
never to meet. This enthusiasm for Lavevgi'O was 
shared by certain of his Norfolk friends of those 
days : 

Among those friends were two who, I believe, are still alive, 
and who about the year 1846 set out, without telling me of their 
intention, on a pilgrimage to Oulton to see George Borrow in the 
flesh. In those days the journey was not an inconsiderable one; 
and though my friends must have known that I would have given 
mv ears to be of the party, I suppose they kept their project to 
themselves for reasons of their own. Two, they say, are company 
and three are none ; two men could ride in a gig for sixty miles 
without much difficulty, and an odd man often spoils sport. At 
any rate, they left me out, and one day they came back full of 
malignant pride and joy and exultation, and they flourished their 
information before me with boastings and laughter at ray ferocious 
jealousy ; for they had seen, and talked with, and eaten and drunk 
with, and sat at the feet of the veritable George Borrow, and had 
grasped his mighty hand. To me it was too provoking. But 
what had they to tell ? 

They found him at Oulton, living, as they affirmed, in a house 
which belonged to Mrs. Borrow and which her first husband had 
left her. The household consisted of himself, his wife, and his 
wife's daughter ; and among his other amusements he employed 
himself in training some young horses to follow him about like 
dogs and come at the call of his whistle. As my two friends were 
talking with him Borrow sounded his whistle in a paddock near 
the house, which, if I remember rightly, was surrounded by a low 
wall. Immediately two beautiful horses came bounding over the 
fence and trotted up to their master. One put his nose into 
Borrow's outsti'etched hand and the other kept snuffing at his 
pockets in expectation of the usual bribe for confidence and good 
behaviour. Borrow could not but be flattered by the young 
Cambridge men paying him the frank homage they offered, and 
he treated them with the robust and cordial hospitality character- 
istic of the man. One or two things they learnt which I do not 
feel at liberty to repeat. 



316 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Mr. Arthur W. Upcher of Sheringham Hall, 
Cromer, also provided in The Athencemti^ a quaint 
reminiscence of Borrow in which he recalled that 
Lavengro had called upon Miss Anna Gurney. This 
lady had, assuredly with less guile, treated him much 
as Frances Cobbe would have done. She had taken 
down an Arabic grammar, and put it into his hand, 
asking for explanation of some difficult point which he 
tried to decipher ; but meanwhile she talked to him 
continuously. ' I could not,' said Borrow, study the 
Arabic grammar and listen to her at the same time, so 
I threw down the book and ran out of the room.' He 
soon after met Mr. Upcher, to whom he made an 
interesting revelation : 

He told us there were three personages in the world whom he 
had always a desire to see ; two of these had slipped through his 
fingers, so he was determined to see the third. ' Pray, Mr. Borrow, 
who were they ? ' He held up three fingers of his left hand and 
pointed them off with the forefinger of the right : the first 
Daniel O'Connell, the second Lamplighter (the sire of Phosphorus, 
Lord Berners's winner of the Derby), the third, Anna Gurney. 
The first two were dead and he had not seen them ; now he had 
come to see Anna Gurney, and this was the end of his visit. 

Mr. William Mackay, who now lives at Oulton 
Broad, where he has heard all the village gossip about 
Borrow and his menage, and we may hope has dis- 
counted it fully, furnishes me with the following 
impression of Borrow, which is of a much later date 
than those I have just given : 

I met Borrow in 1869 at the house of Dr. Gordon Hake at 
Coombe End, near the top of Roehampton Lane, Wimbledon 
Common. My recollection is of a tall, broad-shouldered old man, 

» Letter to The Athenaum, July 22, 1898. 



OULTON BROAD AND YARMOUTH 817 

stooping a little, engaged in reading a small volume held close to 
his eyes. Something Yorkshire about his powerful build, but little 
tolerance or benevolence in his expression. A fine, strongly 
marked clean shaven face, but with no kindliness or sense of 
humour indicated in its lines. In loosely made broadcloth he 
gave the idea of a nonconformist minister — a Unitarian, judging 
from the intellectuality betrayed in his countenance. To me he 
was always civil and, even, genial, for he did not know that I was 
a writing fellow. But to others casually met he seemed to be 
invariably and intolerably rude. He could not brook contradic- 
tion — particularly on religious topics. He was an earnest believer. 
But it was in the God of Battles that he believed. And he would 
be delighted at any time to prove in a stand-up fight the honesty 
of his convictions. In the union of a deep religious fervour with 
an overwhelming love of fighting — sheer physical hand-to-hand 
fighting — he was an interesting study. In this curious blending 
of what appear to be opposite qualities he resembled General 
Gordon, who, by the way, was a cousin of Dr. Gordon Hake at 
whose place I met Borrow. 

He was a splendid liar too. Not in the ordinary domestic 
meaning of the word. But he lied largely, picturesquely, like 
Baron Munchausen. That is one of the reasons that he did not 
take to the literary persons whom he met at Hake's. Perhaps he 
was afraid that some of them would steal his thunder, or perhaps 
he had a contempt for their serious pose. But to those whom he 
did not suspect of literary leanings he lied delightfully. That fine 
boys' book. The Bible in Spain^ is, I should say, chiefly lies. I 
have heard him reel off" adventures as amazing as any in the 
Spanish reminiscences, related as having happened on the very 
Common which we were crossing. Theodore Watts, who first met 
Borrow at Hake's, appears to have got on all right with him. 
But then Watts would get on with anybody. Besides, the two 
men had a common topic in Romany lore. But toward the 
literary man in general his attitude was pretty much that of 
Carlyle. He was contemptuous towards those who followed his 
own trade. 

At one moment of the correspondence we obtain an 
interesting glimpse of a great man of science. Mr. 



318 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Darwin sent the following inquiry through Dr. Hooker, 
afterwards Sir Joseph Hooker, and it reached Borrow 
through his friend Thomas Brightwell : 

Is there any Dog in Spain closely like our English Pointer, in 
shape and size, and habits^ — namely in pointing, backing, and not 
giving tongue. Might I be permitted to quote Mr. Borrow's answer 
to the query ? Has the improved English pointer been introduced 
into Spain ? C. Dauwin. 



y. Tzzr 



O • 7 







FACSIMILE OF A COMMUNICATION FROM CHARLES DARWIN 
TO GEORGE BORROW, 

Borrow took constant holidays during these Oulton 
days. We have elsewhere noted his holidays in Eastern 
Europe, in the Isle of Man, in Wales, and in Cornwall. 
Letters from other parts of England would be welcome, 



OULTON BROAD AND YARMOUTH 319 

but I can only find two, and these are but scraps. Both 
are addressed to his wife, each without date : 



To Mrs. George Borrow 

Oxford, Feb. 2nd. 
Dear Caiiueta, — I reached this place yesterday and hope to 
be home to-night (Monday). I walked the whole way by Kingston, 
Hampton, Sunbury (Miss OriePs place), Windsor, Wallingford, 
etc., a good part of the way was by the Thames. There has been 
much wet weather. Oxford is a wonderful place. Kiss Hen., and 
God bless you ! Geouge Borrow. 



To JNIrs. George Borrow 

TuNBRiDGE Weli.Sj Tuesduy evening. 

Dear Carreta, — I have arrived here safe — it is a wonderful 
place, a small city of palaces amidst hills, rocks, and woods, and is 
full ^of fine people. Please to carry up stairs and lock in the 
drawer the little paper sack of letters in the parlour; lock it up 
with the bank book and put tliis along with it — also be sure to 
keep the window of my room fastened and the door locked, and 
keep the key in your pocket. God bless you and Hen. 

George Borrow. 

One of the very last letters of Borrow that I possess 
is to an unknown correspondent. It is from a rough 
• draft ' in his handwriting : 

OuLTON, Lowestoft, May 1875. 
SiK, — Your letter of the eighth of March I only lately received, 
otherwise I should have answered it sooner. In it you mention 
Chamberlayne's work, containing versions of the Lord's Prayer 
translated into a hundred languages, and ask whether I can 
explain why the one which purports to be a rendering into 
Waldensian is evidently made in some dialect of the Gaelic. To 
such explanation as I can afford you are welcome, though perhaps 



320 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

you will not deem it very satisfactory. I have been acquainted 
with Charaberlayne's work for upwards of forty years. I first saw 
it at St. Petersburg in 1834, and the translation in question very 
soon caught my attention. I at first thought that it was an 
attempt at imposition, but I soon relinquished that idea. I 
remembered that Helvetia was a great place for Gaelic. I do not 
mean in the old time when the Gael possessed the greater part of 
Europe, but at a long subsequent period : Switzerland was con- 
verted to Christianity by Irish monks, the most active and efficient 
of whom was Gall. These people founded schools in which 
together with Christianity the Irish or Gaelic language was taught. 
In process of time, though the religion flourished, the Helveto 
Gaelic died away, but many pieces in that tongue survived, some 
of which might still probably be found in the recesses of St. Gall. 
The noble abbey is named after the venerable apostle of 
Christianity in Helvetia ; so I deemed it very possible that the 
version in question might be one of the surviving fruits of Irish 
missionary labour in Helvetia, not but that I had my doubts, and 
still have, principally from observing that the language though 
certainly not modern does not exhibit any decided marks of high 
antiquity. It is much to be regretted that Chamberlayne should 
have given the version to the world under a title so calculated to 
perplex and mislead as that which it bears, and without even 
stating how or where he obtained it. This, sir, is all I have to 
say on the very obscure subject about which you have done me 
the honour to consult me. — Yours truly, 

George Borrow. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 

Borrow has himself given us — in Lavengro — a pictur- 
esque record of his early experiences in Scotland. It 
is passing strange that he published no account of his 
two visits to the North in maturer years. Why did 
he not write Wild Scotland as a companion volume to 
Wild Wales ? He preserved in little leather pocket- 
books or leather-covered exercise-books copious notes 
of both tours. Two of his notebooks came into the 
possession of the late Dr. Knapp, Borrow's first 
biographer, and are thus described in his Bibliography : 

Note Book of a Tour in Scotland^ the Orlcneys and Shetland in 
Oct. and Dec. 1858. 1 large vol. leather. 

Note Book of Tours around Belfast and the Scottish Boi'ders 
from Stranraer to Berwick-upon-Ticeed in July and August 1866. 
1 vol. leather. 

Of tiiese Dr. Knapp made use only to give the routes 
of Borrow's journeys so far as he was able to interpret 
them. It may be that he was doubtful as to whether 
his purchase of the manuscript carried with it the 
copyright of its contents, as it assuredly did not; it 
may be that he quailed before the minute and almost 
undecipherable handwriting. But similar notebooks 
are in my possession, and there are, happily, in these 

Y 321 



322 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

days typists — you pay them by the hour, and it means 
an infinity of time and patience — who will copy the 
most minute and the most obscure documents. There 
are some of the notebooks of the Scottish tour of 1858 
before me, and what is of far more importance — 
Borrow's letters to his wife while on this tour. Borrow 
lost his mother in August 1858, and this event was 
naturally a great blow to his heart. A week or two 
later he suffered a cruel blow to his pride also, nothing 
less than the return of the manuscript of his much- 
prized translation from the Welsh of The Sleeping 
Bard — and this by his 'prince of publishers,' John 
Murray. ' There is no money in it,' said the publisher, 
and he was doubtless right.^ The two disasters were 
of different character, but both unhinged him. He 
had already written Wild Wales, although it was not 
to be published for another four years. He had caused 
to be advertised — in 1857 — a book on Cornwall, but 
it was never written in any definitive form, and now 
our author had lost heart, and the Cornish book — 
Penquite and Pentyre — and the Scots book never saw 
the light. In these autumn months of 1858 geniality 
and humour had parted from Borrow ; this his diary 
makes clear. He was ill. His wife urged a tour in 
Scotland, and he prepared himself for a rough, simple 
journey, of a kind quite different from the one in 
Wales. The north of Scotland in the winter was 
scarcely to be thought of for his wife and step- 
daughter Henrietta. He tells us in one of these 
diaries that he walked ' several hundred miles in the 
Highlands.' His wife and daughter were with him in 

^ Borrow had The Sleeping Bard printed at his own expense in Great 
Yarmouth in 1860, Mr. Murray giving his imprint on the title-page. See 
Chapter XXXV. p. 404. 



IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 323 

Wales, as every reader of Wild Wales will recall, but 
the Scots tour was meant to be a more formidable 
pilgrimage, and they went to Great Yarmouth instead. 
The first half of the tour— that of September— is dealt 
with in letters to his wife, the latter half is reflected in 
his diary. The letters show Borrows experiences in 
the earlier part of his journey, and from his diaries we 
learn that he was in Oban on 22nd October, Aberdeen 
on 5th November, Inverness on the 9th, and thence he 
went to Tain, Dornoch, Wick, John o' Groat's, and to 
the island towns, Stromness, Kirkwall, and Lerwick. 
He was in Shetland on the 1st of December — alto- 
gether a bleak, cheerless journey, we may believe, even 
for so hardy a tramp as Borrow, and the tone of the 
following extract from one of his rough notebooks 
in my possession may perhaps be explained by the 
circumstance. Borrow is on the way to Loch Laggan 
and visits a desolate churchyard, Coll Harrie, to see 
the tomb of John Macdonnel or Ian Lorn : 

I was on a Highland hill in an old Popish burjing-ground. I 
entered the ruined church, disturbed a rabbit crouching under an 
old tombstone- — it ran into a hole, then came out running about 
like wild — quite frightened — made room for it to run out by the 
doorway, telling it I would not hurt it — went out again and 
examined the tombs. . , . Would have examined much more but 
the wind and rain blew horribly, and I was afraid that my hat, 
if not my head, would be blown into the road over the hill. 
Quitted the place of old Highland Popish devotion — descended 
the hill again with great difficulty — grass slippery and the ground 
here and there quaggy, resumed the road — village — went to the 
door of house looking down the valley — to ask its name — knock — 
people came out, a whole family, looking sullen and all savage. 
The stout, tall young man with the grey savage eyes — civil ques- 
tions — half-savage answers — village's name Achaluarach — the 
neighbourhood — all Catholic — chiefly Macdonnels; said the Eng- 



824 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

lish, my countrymen, had taken the whole country — ' but not 
without paying for it,' I replied — said I was soaking wet with a 
kind of sneer, but never asked me in. I said I cared not for wet. 
A savage, brutal Papist and a hater of the English — the whole 
family with bad countenances — a tall woman in the background 
probably the mother of them all. Bade him good-day, he made 
no answer and I went away. Learnt that the river's name was 
Spean. 

He passed through Scotland in a dispiitative vein, which 
could not have made him a popular traveller. He tells 
a Roman Catholic of the Macdonnel clan to read his 
Bible and ' trust in Christ, not in the Virgin Mary and 
graven images.' He went up to another man who 
accosted him with the remark that ' It is a soft day,' 
and said, ' You should not say a " soft " day, but a wet 
day.' Even the Spanish, for whom he had so much 
contempt and scorn when he returned from the 
Peninsula, are ' in many things a wise people '—after 
his experiences of the Scots. There is abundance of 
Borrow's prejudice, intolerance, and charm in this 
fragment of a diary ^; but the extract I have given is 
of additional interest as showing how Borrow wrote all 
his books. The notebooks that he wrote in Spain and 
Wales were made up of similar disjointed jottings. 
Here is a note of more human character interspersed 
with Borrow's diatribes upon the surliness of the 
Scots. He is at Invergarry, on the Banks of Loch 
Oich. It is the 5th of October : 

Dinner of real haggis ; meet a conceited schoolmaster. This 
nio-ht, or rather in the early morning, I saw in the dream of my 
sleep my dear departed mother — she appeared to be coming out 
of her little sleeping-room at Oulton Hall — overjoyed I gave a 



1 Which will be published in my edition of Borrow's Collected Works. 



IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 325 

cry and fell down at her knee, but my agitation was so great that 
it burst the bonds of sleep, and I awoke. 

But the letters to Mrs. Borrow are the essential docu- 
ments here, and not the copious diaries which I hope 
to publish elsewhere. The first letter to ' Carreta ' is 
from Edinburgh, where Borrow arrived on Sunday, 
19th September 1858 : 



To JNIrs. George Borrow, 38 Camperdown Place, 
Yarmouth, Norfolk 

Edinburgh, Sunday (Sept. 10///, 1858). 
Dear Carreta, — I just write a line to inform you that I arrived 
here yesterday quite safe. We did not start from Yarmouth till 
past three oYIock on Thursday morning ; we reached Newcastle 
about ten on Friday. As I was walking in the street at Newcastle 
a sailor-like man came running up to me, and begged that I 
would let him speak to me. He appeared almost wild with joy. 
I asked him who he was, and he told me he was a Yarmouth 
north beach man, and that he knew me very well. Before I could 
answer, another sailor-like, short, thick fellow came running up, 
who also seemed wild with joy ; he Avas a comrade of the other. I 
never saw two people so out of themselves with pleasure, they 
literally danced in the street ; in fact, they were two of my old 
friends. I asked them how they came down there, and they told 
me that they had been down fishing. They begged a thousand 
pardons for speaking to me, but told me they could not help it. 
I set off for Alnwick on Friday afternoon, stayed there all night, 
and saw the castle next morning. It is a fine old place, but at 
present is undergoing repairs — a Scottish king was killed before 
its walls in the old time. At about twelve I started for Edin- 
burgh. The place is wonderfully altered since I was here, and I 
don't think for the better. There is a Runic stone on the castle 
brae which I am going to copy. It was not there in my time. 
If you write direct to me at the Post Office, Inverness. I am 
thinking of going to Glasgow to-morrow, from which place I shall 



326 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

start for Inverness by one of the packets which go thither by the 
North-West and the Caledonian Canal. I hope that you and 
Hen are well and comfortable. Pray eat plenty of grapes and 
partridges. We had upon the whole a pleasant passage from 
Yarmouth ; we lived plainly but well, and I was not at all ill — 
the captain seemed a kind, honest creature. Remember me kindly 
to Mrs. Tumour and Mrs. Clarke, and God bless you and Hen. 

George Borrow. 

In his unpublished diary Borrow records his journey 
from Glasgow through beautiful but over-described 
scenery to Inverness, where he stayed at the Caledonian 
Hotel : 



To Mrs. George Borrow, 38 Camperdown Place, 
Yarmouth 

Inverness^ Sundar/ (Sept. 26th). 
Dear Carreta, — This is the third letter which I have written 
to you. Whether you have received the other two, or will receive 
this, I am doubtful. I have been several times to the post office, 
but we found no letter from you, though I expected to find one 
awaiting me when I arrived. I wrote last on Friday. I merely 
want to know once how you are, and if all is well I shall move 
onward. It is of not much use staying here. After I had written 
to you on Friday I crossed by the ferry over the Firth and walked 
to Beauly, and from thence to Beaufort or Castle Downie ; at Beauly 
I saw the gate of the pit where old Fraser used to put the people 
whom he owed money to — it is in the old ruined cathedral, and 
at Beaufort saw the ruins of the house where he was born. Lord 
Lovat lives in the house close by. There is now a claimant to 
the title, a descendant of old Fraser's elder brother who connnitted 
a murder in the year 1690, and on that account fled to South 
Wales. The present family are rather uneasy, and so are their 
friends, of whom they have a great number, for though they are 
flaming Papists they are very free of their money. I have told 
several of their cousins that the claimant has not a chance as the 
present family have been so long in possession. They almost 



IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 327 

blessed me for saying so. There, however, can be very little doubt 
that the title and estate, more than a million acres, belong to the 
claimant by strict law. Old Eraser's brother was called Black 
John of the Tasser. The man whom he killed was a piper Avho 
sang an insulting song to him at a wedding. I have heard the 
words and have translated them ; he was dressed very finely, and 
the piper sang : 

' You 're dressed in Highland robes^ O John, 
But ropes of straw would become ye better ; 
You Ve silver buckles your shoes upon 
But leather thongs for them were fitter.' 

Whereupon John drew his dagger and ran it into the piper'^s 
belly ; the descendants of the piper are still living at Beauly. I 
walked that day thirty-four miles between noon and ten o''clock 
at night. My letter of credit is here. This is a dear place, but 
not so bad as Edinburgh. If you have written, don 't write any 
more till you hear from me again. God bless you and Hen. 

George Bokhow. 

' Swindled out of a shilling by rascally ferryman,' is 
Borrows note in his diary of the episode that he relates 
to his wife of crossing the Firth. He does not tell her, 
but his diary tells us, that he changed his inn on the 
day he wrote this letter : the following jottings from 
the diary cover the period : 

Se-pt. 29th. — Quit the ' Caledonian ' for ' Union Sun ' — poor 
accommodation — could scarcely get anything to eat — unpleasant 
day. Walked by the river — at night saw the comet again from 
the bridge. 

Sept. SOth. — Breakfast. The stout gentleman from Caithness, 
Mr. John Miller, gave me his card — show him mine — his delight. 

Oct. 1st. — Left Inverness for Fort Augustus by steamer — 
passengers — strange man — tall gentleman — half doctor — breakfast 
— dreadful hurricane of wind and rain— reach Fort Augustus — 
inn — apartments — Edinburgh ale — stroll over the bridge to a 
wretched village — wind and rain — return — fall asleep before 
fire — dinner — herrings, first-rate — black ale, Higiiland mutton — 



328 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

pudding and cream — stroll round the fort — wet orass—stormy- 
like — wind and rain — return — kitchen — kind, intelligent woman 
from Dornoch — no Gaelic — shows me a Gaelic book of spiritual 
songs by one Robertson — talks to me about Alexander Gumming, 
a fat blacksmith and great singer of Gaelic songs. 

But to return to Borrow's letters to his wife : 



To Mrs. George Borrow, 38 Camperdown Terrace, 
Gt. Yarmouth 

Inverness, September 29th, 1858. 

My dear Carreta, — I have got your letter, and glad enough 
I was to get it. The day after to-morrow I shall depart from 
here for Fort Augustus at some distance up the lake. After 
staying a few days there, I am thinking of going to the Isle of 
Mull, but I will write to you if possible from Fort Augustus. I 
am rather sorry that I came to Scotland — I was never in such a 
place in my life for cheating and imposition, and the farther north 
you go the worse things seem to be, and yet I believe it is possible 
to live very cheap here, that is if you have a house of your own 
and a wife to go out and make bargains, for things are abundant 
enough, but if you move about you are at the mercy of innkeepers 
and suchlike people. The other day I was swindled out of a 
shilling by a villain to whom I had given it for change. I ought, 
perhaps, to have had him up before a magistrate provided I could 
have found one, but I was in a wild place and he had a clan about 
him, and if I had had him up I have no doubt I should have been 
outsworn. I, iiowever, have met one fine, noble old fellow. The 
other night I lost my way amongst horrible moors and wan- 
dered for miles and miles without seeing a soul. At last I saw a 
light which came from the window of a rude hovel. I tapped at 
the window and shouted, and at last an old man came out; he 
asked me what I w^anted, and I told him I had lost my way. 
He asked me where I came from and where I wanted to go, and 
on my telling him he said I had indeed lost my w^ay, for I had 
got out of it at least four miles, and was going away from the 
place I wanted to get to. He then said he would show me the 



IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 329 

way, and went with me for several miles over most horrible places. 
At last we came to a road where he said he thought he might 
leave me, and wished me good-night. I gave him a shilling. He 
was very grateful and said, after considering, that as I had be- 
haved so handsomely to him he would not leave me yet, as he 
thought it possible I might yet lose my way. He then went with 
me three miles farther, and I have no doubt that, but for him, I 
should have lost my way again, the roads were so tangled. I never 
saw such an old fellow, or one whose conversation was so odd and 
entertaining. This happened last Monday night, the night of the 
day in which I had been swindled of the shilling by the other ; I 
could write a history about those two shillings. 



To Mrs. George Borrow, 39 Camperdown Terrace, 
Gt. Yarmouth 

Inverness^ 80th September 1858. 
Dear Carreta, — I write another line to tell you that I have 
got your second letter — it came just in time, as I leave to-morrow. 
In your next, address to George Borrow, Post Office, Tobermory, 
Isle of Mull, Scotland. You had, however, better write without 
delay, as I don 't know hoAv long I may be there ; and be sure only 
to write once. I am glad we have got such a desirable tenant for 
our Maltings, and should be happy to hear that the cottage was 
also let so well. However, let us be grateful for what has been 
accomplished. I hope you wrote to Cooke as I desired you, and 
likewise said something about how I had waited for Murray. . . . 
I met to-day a very fat gentleman from Caithness, at the very 
north of Scotland ; he said he was descended from the Norse. I 
talked to him about them, and he was so pleased with my conver- 
sation that he gave me his card, and begged that I would visit 
him if I went there. As I could do no less, I showed him my 
card — I had but one — and he no sooner saw the name than he 
was in a rapture. I am rather glad that you have got the next 
door, as the locality is highly respectable. Tell Hen that I copied 
the Runic stone on the Castle Hill, Edinburgh. It was brought 
from Denmark in the old time. The inscription is imperfect, but 



330 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

I can read enough of it to see that it was erected by a man to his 
father and mother. I again write the direction for your next : 
George [Borrow, Esq., Post Office, Tobermory, Isle of Mull, 
Scotland. God bless you and Hen. Ever yours, 

George Borrow, 



To Mrs. George Borrow, 39 Camperdown Terrace, 
Gt. Yarmouth 

Fort Augustus, Sunday, October 7tk, 1858. 

Dear Carreta, — I write a line lest you should be uneasy. 
Before leaving the Highlands I thought I would see a little more 
about me. So last week I set on a four days' task, a walk of a 
hundred miles. I returned here late last Thursday night. I walked 
that day forty-five miles ; during the first twenty the rain poured 
in torrents and the wind blew in my face. The last seventeen 
miles were in the dark. To-morrow I proceed towards Mull. I 
hope that you got my letters, and that I shall find something from 
you awaiting me at the post office. The first day I passed over 
Corryarrick, a mountain 3000 feet high. I was nearly up to my 
middle in snow. As soon as I had passed it I was in Badenoch. 
The road on the farther side was horrible, and I was obliged to 
wade several rivulets, one of which was very boisterous and nearly 
threw me down.^ I wandered through a wonderful country, and 
picked up a great many strange legends from the people I met, 
but they were very few, the country being almost a desert, chiefly 
inhabited by deer. When amidst the lower mountains I frequently 
heard them blaring in the woods above me. The people at the 
inn here are by far the nicest I have met ; they are kind and 
honourable to a degree. God bless you and Hen. 

George Borrow. 



* Mr. James Barron of The Inverness Courier informs me that Borrow 
took a well-known route between Fort Augustus and Badenoch, although 
nowadays it is rarely used, as Wade's Road has been abandoned ; it is 
very dilapidated. It was not quite so bad, he says, in 1858. 



IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 331 

To Mrs. George Borrow, 39 Camperdown Terrace, 
Yarmouth 

(Fragment? undated.) 
On Tuesday I am going through the whole of it to Icolmkill — 
I should start to-morrow — but I must get my shoes new soles, for 
they have been torn to pieces by the roads, and likewise some of 
my things mended, for they are in a sad condition. 

I shall return from Thurso to Inverness, as I shall want some 
more money to bring me home. So pray do not let the credit be 
withdrawn. What a blessing it is to have money, but how cautious 
people ought to be not to waste it. Pray remember me most 
kindly to our good friend Mr. Hills. Send the Harveys the 
pheasant as usual with my kind regards. I think you should 
write to Mr. Dalton of Bury telling him that I have been unwell, 
and that I send my kind regards and respects to him. I send 
dear Hen a paper in company with this, in which I have enclosed 
specimens of the heather, the moss and the fern, or ' raineach,' of 
Mull. — God bless you both, George Borkow. 

Do not delay in sending the order. 
Write at the same time telling me 
how you are. 

To Mrs. George Borrow, 39 Camperdown Terrace, 
Yarmouth, Norfolk 

Inverness, Nov. 7th, 1858. 
Dear Carreta, — After I wrote to you I walked round Mull 
and through it, over Benmore. I likewise went to Icolmkill, and 
passed twenty-four hours there. I saw the wonderful ruin and 
crossed the island, I suffered a great deal from hunger, but 
what I saw amply repaid me ; on my return to Tobermory I was 
rather unwell, but got better. I was disappointed in a passage to 
Thurso by sea, so I was obliged to return to this place by train.^ 

^ Mr. Barron points out to me that as there was no direct railway com- 
munication Borrow must have gone to Aberdeen or Huntly, and returned 
from the latter town to Inverness. He must have taken a steamer from 
Tobermory to Fort William, and thence probably walked by Glen Speau and 
Laggan to Kingussie. After that he must have traversed one of the passes 
leading by Ben Macdhui or the Cairngorms to Aberdeenshire. 



332 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

On Tuesday, D.V., I shall set out on foot, and hope to find your 
letter awaiting me at the post office at Thurso. On coming 
hither by train I nearly lost my things. I was told at Huntly 
that the train stopped ten minutes, and meanwhile the train drove 
off purposely ; I telegraphed to Keith in order that my things 
might be secured, describing where they were, under the seat. 
The reply was that there was nothing of the kind there. I 
instantly said that I would bring an action against the company, 
and walked off to the town, where I stated the facts to a magis- 
trate, and gave him my name and address. He advised me to 
bring my action. I went back and found the people frightened. 
They telegraphed again — and the reply was that the things were 
safe. There is nothing like setting oneself up sometimes. I was 
terribly afraid I should never again find my books and things. I, 
however, got them, and my old umbrella, too. I was sent on by 
the mail train, but lost four hours, besides undergoing a great 
deal of misery and excitement. When I have been to Thurso and 
Kirkwall I shall return as quick as possible, and shall be glad to 
get out of the country. As I am here, however, I wish to see all 
I can, for I never wish to return. Whilst in Mull I lived very 
cheaply — it is not costing me more than seven shillings a day. 
The generality of the inns, however, in the lowlands are incredibly 
dear — half-a-crown for breakfast, consisting of a little tea, a 
couple of small eggs, and bread and butter — two shillings for 
attendance. Tell Hen that I have some moss for her from Ben- 
more — also some seaweed from the farther shore of Icolmkill, 
God bless you. George Borrow. 

I do not possess any diaries or notebooks covering 
the period of the following letters. The diary which 
covers this period is mentioned in the bibhography 
attached to Dr. Knapp's Life of Borrow, which, with 
the rest of Dr. Knapp's Borrow papers, is now in the 
possession of the Hispanic Society, New York. 

Thurso, 21*^ Nov. 1858. 
My dear Cakreta, — I reached this place on Friday night, 
and was glad enough to get your kind letter. I shall be so glad to 



IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 333 

get home to you. Since my last letter to you I have walked nearly 
160 miles. I was terribly taken in with respect to distances — 
however, I managed to make my way. I have been to Johnny 
Groafs House, which is about twenty-two miles from this place. 
I had tolerably fine weather all the way, but within two or three 
miles of that place a terrible storm arose ; the next day the 
country was covered with ice and snow. There is at present here 
a kind of Greenland winter, colder almost than I ever knew the 
winter in Russia. The streets are so covered with ice that it is 
dangerous to step out ; to-morrow D. and I pass over into Orkney, 
and we shall take the first steamer to Aberdeen and Inverness, 
from whence I shall make the best of my way to England. It is 
well that I have no farther to walk, for walking now is almost im- 
possible — the last twenty miles were terrible, and the weather is 
worse now than it was then. I was terribly deceived with respect 
to steamboats. I was told that one passed over to Orkney every 
day, and I have now been waiting two days, and there is not yet 
one. I have had quite enough of Scotland. When I was at 
Johnny Groat's I got a shell for dear Hen, which I hope I shall be 
able to bring or send to her. I am glad to hear that you have 
got out the money on mortgage so satisfactorily. One of the 
greatest blessings in this world is to be independent. My spirits 
of late have been rather bad, owing principally to my dear mother's 
death. I always knew that we should miss her. I dreamt about 
her at Fort Augustus. Though I have walked so much I have 
suffered very little from fatigue, and have got over the ground with 
surprising facility, but I have not enjoyed the country so much as 
Wales. I wish that you would order a hat for me against I come 
home ; the one I am wearing is very shabby, having been so fre- 
quently drenched with rain and storm-beaten. I cannot say the 
exact day that I shall be home, but you may be expecting me. 
The worst is that there is no depending on the steamers, for there 
is scarcely any traffic in Scotland in winter. My appetite of late 
has been very poorly, chiefly, I believe, owing to badness of food 
and want of regular meals. Glad enough, I repeat, shall I be to 
get home to you and Hen. George Borrow. 

KiRKWAM,, Orkney^ November 27th, 1858. Saturday. 
Dear Carreta, — I am, as you see, in Orkney, and I expect 



334 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

every minute the steamer which will take me to Shetland and 
Aberdeen, from which last place I go by train to Inverness, where 
my things are, and thence home. I had a stormy passage to 
Stromness, from whence I took a boat to the Isle of Hoy, where I 
saw the wonderful Dwarfs House hollowed out of the stone. 
From Stromness I walked here. I have seen the old Norwegian 
Cathedral ; it is of red sandstone, and looks as if cut out of rock. 
It is different from almost everything of the kind I ever saw. It 
is stern and grand to a degree. I have also seen the ruins of the 
old Norwegian Bishop's palace in which King Hacon died ; also 
the ruins of the palace of Patrick, Earl of Orkney. I have been 
treated here with every kindness and civility. As soon as the 
people knew who I was they could scarcely make enough of me. 
The Sheriff, Mr. Robertson, a great Gaelic scholar, said he was 
proud to see me in his house ; and a young gentleman of the name 
of Petrie, Clerk of Supply, has done nothing but go about with 
me to show me the wonders of the place. Mr. Robertson wished to 
give me letters to some gentleman at Edinburgh. I, however, 
begged leave to be excused, saying that I wished to get home, as, 
indeed, I do, for my mind is wearied by seeing so many strange 
places. On my way to Kirkwall I saw the stones of Stennis — 
immense blocks of stone standing up like those of Salisbury Plain. 
All the country is full of Druidical and Pictish remains. It is, 
however, very barren, and scarcely a tree is to be seen, only a few 
dwarf ones. Orkney consists of a multitude of small islands, the 
principal of which is Pomona, in which Kirkwall is. The currents 
between them are terrible. I hope to be home a few days after 
you receive these lines, either by rail or steamer. This is a fine 
day, but there has been dreadful weather here. I hope we shall 
have a prosperous passage. I have purchased a little Kirkwall 
newspaper, which I send you with this letter. I shall perhaps 
post both at Lerwick or Aberdeen. I sent you a Johnny Groat's 
newspapei-, which I hope you got. Don't tear either up, for they 
are curious. God bless you and Hen. George Borrow. 



Stirling, Dec. lAth, 1858. 

Dear Carreta, — I write a line to tell you that I am well and 
that I am on my way to England, but I am stopped here for a day, 



IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 335 

for there is no conveyance. Wherever I can walk I get on very 
well — but if you depend on coaches or any means of conveyance in 
this country you are sure to be disappointed. This place is but 
thirty-five miles from Edinburgh, yet I am detained for a day — 
there is no train. The waste of that day will prevent me getting 
to Yarmouth from Hull by the steamer. Were it not for my 
baggage I would walk to Edinburgh. I got to Aberdeen, where 
I posted a letter for you. I was then obliged to return to Inver- 
ness for my luggage — 125 miles. Rather than return again to 
Aberdeen, I sent on my things to Dunkeld and walked the 102 
miles through the Highlands. When I got here I walked to Loch 
Eomond and Loch Katrine, thirty-eight miles over horrible roads. 
I then got back here. I have now seen the whole of Scotland that 
is worth seeing, and have walked 600 miles. I shall be glad to be 
out of the country ; a person here must depend entirely upon him- 
self and his own legs. I have not spent much money — my expenses 
during my wanderings averaged a shilling a day. As I was walk- 
ing through Strathspey, singularly enough I met two or three of 
the Phillips. I did not know them, but a child came running 
after me to ask me my name. It was Miss P. and two of the 
children. I hope to get to you in two or three days after you get 
this. God bless you and dear Hen. George Borrow. 

In spite of Borrow's vow never to visit Scotland 
again, lie was there eight years later — in 1866 — but 
only in the lowlands. His stepdaughter. Hen., or 
Henrietta Clarke, had married Dr. MacOubrey, of Bel- 
fast, and Borrow and his wife went on a visit to the 
pair. But the incorrigible vagabond in Borrow was 
forced to declare itself, and leaving his wife and daughter 
in Belfast he crossed to Stranraer by steamer on 
17th July 1866, and tramped through the lowlands, 
visiting Ecclefechan and Gretna Green. We have no 
record of his experiences at these places. The only 
literary impression of the Scots tour of 1866, apart 
from a brief reference in Dr. Knapp's Life, is an essay on 
Kirk Yetholm in Uoinano havo-LiL We would gladly 



336 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

have exchanged it for an account of his visits to Abbots- 
ford and Melrose, two places which he saw in August 
of this year. 

In his letter of 27th November from Kirkwall it will 
be seen that Borrow records the kindness received from 
' a young gentleman of the name of Petrie.' It is plea- 
sant to find that when he returned to England he did 
not forget that kindness, as the next letter demonstrates : 

To George Petrie, Esq., Kirkwall 

39 Camperdown Place, Yarmouth, Juny. 14, 1859. 

My dear Sir, — Some weeks ago I wrote to Mr. Murray (and) 
requested him to transmit to you two works of mine. Should you 
not have received them by the time this note reaches you, pray 
inform me and I will write to him again. They may have come 
already, but whenever they may come to hand, keep them in remem- 
brance of one who will never forget your kind attention to him in 
Orkney. 

On reaching Aberdeen I went to Inverness by rail. From 
there I sent off my luggage to Dunkeld, and walked thither by the 
Highland road. I never enjoyed a walk more — the weather was 
tolerably fine, and I was amidst some of the finest scenery in the 
world. I was particularly struck with that of Glen Truim. Near 
the top of the valley in sight of the Craig of Badenoch on the left 
hand side of the way, I saw an immense cairn, probably the 
memorial of some bloody clan battle. On my journey I picked up 
from the mouth of an old Highland woman a most remarkable 
tale concerning the death of Fian or Fingal. It differs entirely 
from the Irish legends which I have heard on the subject — and is 
of a truly mythic character. Since visiting Shetland I have thought 
a great deal about the Picts, but cannot come to any satisfactory 
conclusion. Were they Celts ? were they Laps ? Macbeth could 
hardly have been a Lap, but then the tradition of the country that 
they were a diminutive race, and their name Fight or Pict, which 
I almost think is the same as petit — pixolo — puj — pigmy. It is a 
truly perplexing subject — quite as much so as that of Fingal, and 



IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 337 

whether he was a Scotsman or an Irishman I have never been 
able to decide, as there has been so much to be said on both sides 
of the question. Please present my kind remembrances to Mrs. 
Petrie and all friends, particularly Mr. Sheriff Robertson,^ who 
first did me the favour of making me acquainted with you. — And 
believe me to remain, dear Sir, ever sincerely yours, 

Georgp: Borrow. 

Thank you for the newspaper — the notice was very kind, but 
rather too flattering. 

On the same day that Borrow wrote, Mr. Petrie sent 
his acknowledgment of the books, and so the letters 
crossed : 

I was very agreeably surprised on opening a packet, which 
came to me per steamer ten days ago, to find that it contained a 
present from you of your highly interesting and valuable works 

^ Mr. Sheriff Robertson's son kindly sends me the following extract 
from the diary of his father, James Robertson, Shei'iff of Orkney : 

' Friday, 26th November 1858. — In the evening Geo. Petrie called with 
"Bible Borrow." He is a man about 60, upwards of six feet in height, and 
of an athletic though somewhat gaunt frame. His hair is pure white though 
a little bit thin on the top, his features high and handsome, and his com- 
plexion ruddy and healthy. He was dressed in black, his surtout 
was old, his shoes very muddy. He spoke in a loud tone of voice, 
knows Gaelic and Irish well, quoted Ian Lom, Duncan Ban M'lutyre, 
etc., is publishing an account of AV^elsh, Irish, and Gaelic bards. He 
travelled— on foot principally— from Inverness to Thurso, and is going 
on to-morrow to Zetland. He walked lately through the upper part 
of Badenoch, Lochaber, and the adjacent counties, and through Mull, 
which he greatly admired. ... In his rambles he associated exclusively 
with the lower classes, and when I offered to give him letters of 
introduction to Wm. F. Skene, Robert Chambers, Joseph Robertson, 
etc., he declined to accept them. His mother died lately and he was 
travelling, he said, to divert and throw off his melancholy. He talked 
very freely on all subjects that one broached, but not with precision, and 
he appeared to me to be an amiable man and a gentleman, but, withal, 
something of a projector, if not an adventurer. He is certainly eccentric. 
I asked him to take wine, etc., and he declined. He said he was 
bred at the High School of Edinburgh, and that he was there in 1813, 
and mentioned that he was partly educated in Ireland, and that by birth 
and descent he is an Englishman.' 

Y 



338 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Lavengro and Romany Rye. Coming from any person such books 
would have been highly prized by me, and it is therefore specially 
gratifying to have them presented to me by their author. Please 
to accept of my sincere and heartfelt thanks for your kind re- 
membrance of me and your valuable gift. May I request you to 
confer an additional favour on me by sending me a sHp of paper 
to be pasted on each of the five volumes, stating that they were 
presented to me by you. I would like to hand them down as an 
heirloom to my family. I am afraid you will think that I am a 
very troublesome acquaintance. 

I would have written sooner, but I expected to have had some 
information to give you about some of the existing superstitions 
of Orkney which might perhaps have some interest for you. I 
have, however, been much engrossed with county business during 
the last fortnight, and must therefore reserve my account of these 
matters till another opportunity. 

Mr. Balfour, our principal landowner in Orkney, is just now 
writing an article on the ancient laws and customs of the county 
to be prefixed to a miscellaneous collection of documents, chiefly of 
the sixteenth century. He is taking the opportunity to give an 
account of the nature of the tenures by which the ancient Jarls held 
the Jarldom, and the manner in which the odalret became gradually 
supplanted. I have furnished him with several of the documents, 
and am just now going over it with him. It is for the Bannatyne 
Club in Edinburgh that he is preparing it, but I have suggested to 
him to have it printed for general sale, as it is very interesting, 
and contains a great mass of curious information condensed into a 
comparatively small space. Mr. Balfour is very sorry that he had 
not the pleasure of meeting you when you were here. 

My last glimpse of George Borrow in Scotland 
during his memorable trip of the winter of 1858 is 
contained in a letter that I received some time ago 
from the Rev. J. Wilcock of St. Ringan's Manse, 
Lerwick, which runs as follows : 

Nov. 18th, 1903. 
Dear Sir, — As I see that you are interested in George 
Borrow, would you allow me to supply you with a little notice of 



IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 339 

him which has not appeared in print? A friend here — need I 
explain that this is written from the capital of the Shetlands ? — 
a friend, I say, now dead, told me that one day early in the fore- 
noon, during the winter, he had walked out from the town for a 
stroll into the country. About a mile out from the town is a 
piece of water called the Loch of Clickimin, on a peninsula, in 
which is an ancient (so-called) 'Pictish Castle.' His attention 
was attracted by a tall, burly stranger, who was surveying this 
ancient relic with deep interest. As the water of the loch was 
well up about the castle, converting the plot of ground on which 
it stood almost altogether into an island, the stranger took oft' 
shoes and stockings and trousers, and waded all round the building 
in order to get a thorough view of it. This procedure was all the 
more remarkable from the fact, as above mentioned, that the season 
was winter. I believe that there was snow on the ground at the 
time. My friend noticed on meeting him again in the course of the 
same walk that he was very lightly clothed. He had on a cotton 
shirt, a loose open jacket, and on the whole was evidently indiff^erent 
to the rigour of our northern climate at that time of the year. 

In addition to the visit to Belfast in 1866, Borrow 
was in Ireland the year following his Scots tour of 1858, 
that is to say from July to November 1859. He went, 
accompanied by his wife and daughter, by Holyhead to 
Dublin, where, as Dr. Knapp has discovered, they 
resided at 75 St. Stephen Green, South. Borrow, as 
was his custom, left his family while he was on a 
walking tour which included Connemara and on north- 
ward to the Giant's Causeway. He was keenly 
interested in the two Societies in Dublin engaged upon 
the study of ancient Irish literature, and he became a 
member of the Ossianic Society in July of this year. 
I have a number of Borrow's translations from the 
Irish in my possession, but no notebooks of his tour 
on this occasion. 

All Irishmen who wish their country to preserve its 
individuality should have a kindly feeling for George 



340 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Borrow. Opposed as he was to the majority of the 
people in rehgion and in politics, he was ahout the only 
Englishman of his time who took an interest in their 
national literature, language and folk-lore. Had he 
written such another travel book about Ireland as 
he wrote about Wales he would certainly have added 
to the sum of human pleasure. 

I find only one letter to his wife during this Irish 
journey : 

To Mrs. George Borrow 

Ballina^ County INIayo, Thursday Morning. 

My dear Carreta, — I write to you a few lines. I have 
now walked 270 miles, and have passed through Leinster and 
Connaught. I have suffered a good deal of hardship, for this is a 
very different country to walk in from England. The food is bad 
and does not agree with me. I shall be glad to get back, but first 
of all I wish to walk to the Causeway. As soon as I have done 
that I shall get on railroad and return, as I find there is a rail- 
road from Londonderry to Dublin. Pray direct to me at Post 
OflSce, Londonderry. I have at present about seven pounds 
remaining, perhaps it would bring me back to Dublin ; however, 
to prevent accidents, liave the kindness to enclose me an order 
on the Post Office, Londonderry, for five pounds. I expect to be 
there next Monday, and to be home by the end of the week. 
Glad enough I shall be to get back to you and Hen. I got your 
letter at Galway. What you said about poor Flora was comfort- 
ing — pray take care of her. Don't forget the order. I hope to 
write in a day or two a kind of duplicate of this. I send Hen. 
heath from Connemara, and also seaweed from a bay of the 
Atlantic. I have walked across Ireland; the country people 
are civil; but I believe all classes are disposed to join the French. 
The idolatry and popery are beyond conception. God bless you, 
dearest. George Borrow. 

Love to Hen. and poor Flora. (Keep this.) 



CHAPTER XXX 

THE ROMANY RYE 

George Boreow's three most important books had all 
a very interesting history. We have seen the processes 
by which The Bible in Spain was built up from note- 
books and letters. We have seen further the most 
curious apprenticeship by which Lavengro came into 
existence. The most distinctly English book — at least 
in a certain absence of cosmopolitanism — that Vic- 
torian literature produced was to a great extent written 
on scraps of paper during a prolonged Continental 
tour which included Constantinople and Budapest. 
In Laveng?^o we have only half a book, the whole 
work, which included what came to be published as 
The Romany Rye, having been intended to appear in 
four volumes. The first volume was written in 1843, 
the second in 1845, after the Continental tour, which is 
made use of in the description of the Hungarian, and 
the third volume in the years between 1845 and 1848. 
Then in 1852 Borrow wrote out an ' advertisement ' of 
a fourth volume,^ which runs as follows : 

Shortly will be published in one volume. Price 10s. The 
Rommany Rye, Being the fourth volume of Lavengro. By George 
Borrow, author of The Bible in Spain. 

1 Borrow was fond of writing out title-pages for his books, and I have 
a dozen or so of these draft title-pages among my Borrow Papers. 

341 



34-2 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

But this volume did not make an appearance ' shortly.' 
Its author was far too much offended with the critics, 
too disheartened it may be to care to offer himself again 
for their gibes. The years rolled on, much of the time 
being spent at Yarmouth, a little of it at Oulton. There 
was a visit to Cornwall in 1S54. and another to Wales 
in the same year. The Isle of Man was selected for a 
holiday in 1S55. and not until 1S57 did The Romany 
Bye appear. The book was now in two volumes, 
and we see that the word Romany had dropped an 
*m': 

The Romanr Rve : A Sequd to * Lavengix).* Bv G«orge 
Borrow, author of * The Bible in Spain,' * Tbe Grp<ies of Spain.* 
etc., * Fear God. and take rour own parL' In Two Volumes. 
LcMidcMi : John Murray, Albemarle Street., ISoT. 

Dr. Knapp publishes some vigorous correspondence 
between Mrs. Borrow and her husbands publisher 
written prior to the issue of The Romany Rye. ' Mr. 
Borrow has not the slightest wish to publish the book." 
she savs. * The manuscript was left with you because 
you wished to see it.' This was written in 1855. the 
wife presumablv writing at her husband's dictation. In 
1857 the situation was not improved, as Borrow himself 
writes to Mr. Murray : * In your last letter you talk of 
obiiging me by pubS^tng- my verse. Now is not that 
speaking very injudiciously ? ' * At last, however, in 

* Dr. Knapp's Ltfty toL iL p. 1^. 

' BoROw's *sa»ri a<W» wiA tke firm of Mamj deacnes a ckaptcr to 
itsd£, Wt tke mitanal fmr vntm^ sack a dsftar ke alreadr bccB «se4 W 
Dr. Knapp and Mr. Hokot JenkiK. T¥e pteACUi 3ir. Jaka MarraT; Jaks 
Manar rr., kae sereatj lettns &mb Banaw to kis izm ia kis p a ixeiizii a n 
TW fir^ of tke »■■> to pak&k Barrow's works wk Joka Xfairar n., wka 
4ie4 in 181S. Joka Manar nr, wko died in 1892. and kk parta^ and 
ca«m Bakert Cooke, were Bonow's frieadsL He kad dilcn a cc' at tiaes. 
kat ke was loval to Acm aad tkey were l^al to kia as good iBl fc w ■ aad 



THE ROMAXY RYE 343 

April ISoT. 21ic Romanii Biic appeared, and we are 
introduced once more to many old favourites, to Petu- 
lengro. to the Man in Black, and above all to Isopel 
Berners. The incidents of Lavcngro are supposed to 
have taken place between the 24th May 1825 and the ISth 
July of that year. In The Romany Bye the incidents 
apparently occur between 19th July and 3rd August 
18'Jo. In the opinion of that most eminent of gypsy 
experts, 3Ir. John Sampson.^ the whole of the episodes 
in the five volumes occurred in seventy-two days. Mr. 
Sampson agrees with Dr. Knapp in locating Mumper's 
Dingle in Momber or Monmer Lane. Willenhall. 

tood publishers ought to be. With all hi* irritability Borrow had the 
sense to see that there was substantial reason in their declining to issue his 
traaslatioQS. That, although at the end there were long intervals of silence, 
the publishers and their author remained friends is shown by letters written 
to his daughter after Borrows death, and by the following little note from 
Borrow to John Murray which was probably never sent. It is in the feeble, 
broken handwriting of what was probably the last year of Borrows life. 

To John Murray, Esq. 

■ Ocxxos {no date). 

' My deab Frie>-i>, — Thank you most sincerely for sending me the last 
vol. of the (^arterly. a truly remarkable one it is, full of literature of every 
description — I should have answered the receipt of it before had I not been 
very unwell. Should you come to these parts do me the favour to look in 
upon me — it might do me good, and say the same thing from me to my kind 
and true friend Robt. Cooke. His last visit to me did me much good, and 
another might probably do me the same. ^\Tiat a horrible state the country 
seems to be in, and no wonder — a monster-minister whose principal aim 
seems to be the rain of his native land, a parliament either incompetent or 
indi^erent. However, let us hope for the best Pray send my cordial 
respects to Mrs. Murray and kind regards to the rest of your good family. — 
Ever sincerely roars, George Borrow.' 

* Mr. Sampson has written an admirable introduction to The Romany Rye 
in Methuen's ' Little Library,' bat he goes rather far in his suggestion that 
Borrow instead of writing " Joseph Sell " for £20, possibly obtained that sum 
by imitating "the methods of Jerry Abershaw, Galloping Dick,' or some of 
the ' fraternity of vagabonds ' whose lives Borrow had chronicled in his 
Cekirattd Triali, in other words, that he stole the money. 



344 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Shropshire. The dingle has disappeared — it is now 
occupied by the Monmer Lane Ironworks — but you 
may still find Dingle Bridge and Dingle Lane. The 
book has added to the glamour of gypsydom, and to 
the interest in the gypsies which we all derive from 
Laveng7'o, but Mr. Sampson makes short work of 
Borrow 's gypsy learning on its philological side. ' No 
gypsy,' he says, ' ever uses dial or engro as a separate 
word, or talks of the dukkering dook or of 'penning a 
dukkeriii.' ' Borrow's genders are perversely incorrect ' ; 
and ' Romany ' — a word which can never get out of our 
language, let philologists say what they will — should 
have been ' Romani.' ' " Haarstriiubend " is the fitting 
epithet,' says Mr. Sampson, * which an Oriental 
scholar, Professor Richard Pischel of Berhn, finds to 
describe Borrow's etymologies.' But all this is very 
unimportant, and the book remains in the whole of its 
forty-seven chapters not one whit less a joy to us than 
does its predecessor Lavengro, with its visions of gypsies 
and highwaymen and boxers. 

But then there is its ' Appendix.' That appendix of 
eleven petulant chapters undoubtedly did Borrow harm 
in his day and generation. Now his fame is too great, 
and his genius too firmly established for these strange 
dissertations on men and things to offer anything but 
amusement or edification. They reveal, for example, 
the singularly non-literary character of this great man 
of letters. Much — too much — has been made of his 
dislike of Walter Scott and his writings. As a matter 
of fact Borrow tells us that he admired Scott both as a 
prose writer and as a poet. ' Since Scott he had read 
no modern writer. Scott was greater than Homer,' 
he told Frances Cobbe. But he takes occasion to 
condemn his ' Charlie o'er the water nonsense,' and 



*THE ROMANY RYE' 345 

declares that his love of and sympathy with certain 
periods and incidents have made for sympathy with 
what he always calls ' Popery.'^ Well, looking at the 
matter from an entirely opposite point of view. Cardinal 
Newman declared that the writings of Scott had had 
no inconsiderable influence in directing his mind 
towards the Church of Rome.^ 

During the first quarter of this century a great poet was 
raised up in the North, who, whatever were his defects, has con- 
tributed by liis works, in prose and verse, to prepare men for some 
closer and more practical approximation to Catholic truth. The 
general need of something deeper and more attractive than what 
had offered itself elsewhere may be considered to have led to his 
popularity ; and by means of his popularity he re-acted on his 
readers, stimulating their mental thirst, feeding their hopes, 
setting before them visions, which, when once seen, are not easily 
forgotten, and silently indoctrinating them with nobler ideas, 
which might afterwards be appealed to as first principles.' 

And thus we see that Borrow had a certain prescience 
in this matter. But Borrow, in good truth, cared little 
for modern English literature. His heart was entirely 
with the poets of other lands — the Scandinavians and 
the Kelts. In Virgil he apparently took little interest, 
nor in the great poetry of Greece, Rome and Eng- 
land, although we find a reference to Theocritus and 
Dante in his books. Fortunately for his fame he had 
read Gil Bias, Don Quixote, and, above all, Robinson 
Crusoe, which last book, first read as a boy of six, 

* The Romany Rye, Appendix, ch. vii. 

2 It is interesting to note that all the surviving members of Sir Walter 
Scott's family belong to the Roman Catholic Church, as do certain members 
of the family of Newman's opponent, Charles Kingsley. Several members 
of Charles Dickens's family are also Roman Catholics. 

^ Essays Critical and Histoj'ical hy John Henry Cardinal NewmaUj vol. i., 
Longmans. See also Apologia pro Vita Sua, pp. 96-97. 



346 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

coloured his whole life. Defoe and Fielding and Bunyan 
were the English authors to whom he owed most. Of 










*%-4ttnft^-4 (I-. 






^i^^ 



Wa 






U-tU /Vk 



^»-i^ .lirnv.j. I'-^ HtKa/ IVvDi-t/ '^A(W\. 



FACSIMILE OF A PAGE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF 
THE ROMANY R YE 

From the Borrow Papers in the possession of the Author of ' George Borrow and his Circle.' 

Byron he has quaint things to say, and of Wordsworth 
things that are neither quaint nor wise. We recall the 
man in the field in the twenty-second chapter of The 



'THE ROMANY RYE' 347 

Romany Rye who used Wordsworth's poetry as a 
soporific. And throughout his life Borrow's position 
towards his contemporaries in literature was ever con- 
temptuous. He makes no mention of Carlyle or 
Ruskin or Matthew Arnold, and they in their turn, it 
may be added, make no mention of him or of his works. 
Thackeray he snubbed on one of the few occasions they 
met, and Browning and Tennyson were alike unrevealed 
to him. Borrow^ indeed stands quite apart from the 
great literature of a period in 'vvhich he ^vas a striking 
and individual figure. Lacking appreciation in this 
sphere of work, he wrote of ' the contemptible trade of 
author,' counting it less creditable than that of a 
jockey. 

But all this is a digression from the progress of our 
narrative of the advent of The Romany Rye. The book 
was published in an edition of 1000 copies in April 
1857, and it took thirty years to dispose of 3750 copies. 
Not more than 2000 copies of his book %vere sold in 
Great Britain during the twenty-three remaining years 
of Borro^v's life, ^^^hat wonder that he was embittered 
by his failure ! The reviews w^ere far from favourable, 
although Mr. Elwin wrote not unkindly in an article in 
the Quarterly Review called ' Roving Life in England.' 
No critic, however, was as severe as The Atlienreum, 
which had called Laven^ro ' balderdash ' and referred to 
The Romany Rye as the ' literary dough ' of an author 
* whose dullest gypsy preparation w^e have now read.' In 
later years, when, alas! it was too late, The Athemeum, 
through the eloquent pen of Theodore Watts, made 
good amends. But William Bodham Donne wTote 
to Borrow^ ^vith adequate enthusiasm : 



348 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

To George Borrow, Esq. 

12 St. James's Square, May 2ith, 1857. 

My dear Sir, — I received your book some days ago, but would 
not write to you before I was able to read it, at least once, since 
it is needless, I hope, for me to assure you that I am truly gratified 
by the gift. 

Time to read it I could not find for some days after it was sent 
hither, for what with winding up my affairs here, the election of 
my successor, preparations for flitting, etc., etc., I have been in- 
cessantly occupied with matters needful to be done, but far less 
agreeable to do than reading The Romany Rye. All I have said 
of Lavengro to yourself personally, or to others publicly or 
privately, I say again of The Romany Rye. Everywhere in it the 
hand of the master is stamped boldly and deeply. You join the 
chisel of Dante with the pencil of Defoe. 

I am rejoiced to see so many works announced of yours, for 
you have more that is worth knowing to tell than any one I am 
acquainted with. For your coming progeny's sake I am disposed 
to wish you had worried the literary-craft less. Brand and score 
them never so much, they will not turn and repent, but only spit 
the more froth and venom. I am reckoning of my emancipation 
with an eagerness hardly proper at my years, but I cannot help it, 
so thoroughly do I hate London, and so much do I love the 
country. I have taken a house, or rather a cottage, at Walton on 
Thames, just on the skirts of Weybridge, and there I hope to see 
you before I come into Norfolk, for I am afraid my face will not 
be turned eastward for many weeks if not months. 

Remember me kindly to Mrs. Borrow and Miss Clarke, and 
believe me, my dear Sir, very truly and thankfully yours. 

Wm. B. Donne. 

And perhaps a letter from the then Town Clerk of 
Oxford is worth reproducing here : 

To George Borrow, Esq. 

Town Clerk's Office^ Oxford, 19/A August 1857. 
Sir, — We have, attached to our Corporation, an ancient jocular 



' THE ROMANY RYE ' 349 

court composed of 13 of the poor old freemen who attend the 
elections and have a king who sits attired in scarlet with a crown 
and sentences interlopers (non-freeman) to be cold-burned, i.e. a 
bucket or so of water introduced to the offender's sleeve by means 
of the city pump ; but this infliction is of course generally com- 
muted by a small pecuniary compensation. 

They call themselves ' Slaveonians ' or ' Sclavonians/ The 
only notice we have of them in the city records is by the name of 
' Slovens Hall/ Reading Roman}/ Rye I notice your account of 
the Sclaves and venture to trouble you with this, and to enquire 
whether you think that the Sclaves might be connected through 
the Saxons with the ancient municipal institutions of this country. 
You are no doubt aware that Oxford is one of the most ancient 
Saxon towns, being a royal bailiwick and fortified before the 
Conquest, — Yours truly. George P. Hester. 

In spite of contemporary criticism, The Romany 
Rye is a great book, or rather it contains the concluding 
chapters of a great book. Sequels are usually pro- 
claimed to be inferior to their predecessors. But The 
Roviaiiy Rye is not a sequel. It is part of Lavengro, 
and is therefore Borrow's most imperishable monument. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

EDWARD FITZGERALD 

Edward FitzGerald once declared that he was about 
the only friend with whom Borrow had never quarrelled/ 
There was probably no reason for this exceptional amity 
other than the ' genius for friendship ' with which Fitz- 
Gerald has been rightly credited. There were certainly, 
however, many points of likeness between the two men 
which might have kept them at peace. Both had written 
copiously and out of all proportion to the public demand 
for their work. Both revelled in translation. Fitz- 
Gerald's eight volumes in a magnificent American edi- 
tion consists mainly of translations from various tongues 
which no man presumably now reads. All the world has 
read and will long continue to read his translation or 
paraphrase of Omar Khayyam's Ruhdiydt. ' Old Fitz,' as 
his friends called him, lives by that, although his letters 
are among the best in literature. Borrow wrote four 
books that will live, but had publishers been amenable 
he would have published forty, and all as unsaleable as 
the major part of FitzGerald's translations. Both men 
were Suffolk squires, and yet delighted more in the 
company of a class other than their own, FitzGerald of 
boatmen. Borrow of gypsies ; both were counted 
eccentrics in their respective villages. Perhaps alone 

1 This was said by FitzGerald to hia friend Frederick Spalding. 

350 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 851 

among the great Victorian authors they lived to be old 
without receiving in their lives any popular recogni- 
tion of their great literary achievements. But Fitz- 
Gerald had a more cultivated mind than Borrow. He 
loved literature and literary men whilst Borrow did 
not. His criticism of books is of the best, and his friend- 
ships with bookmen are among the most interesting 
in literary history. ' A solitary, shy, kind-hearted man,' 
was the verdict upon him of the frequently censorious 
Carlyle. When Anne Thackeray asked her father 
which of his friends he had loved best, he answered 
' Dear old Fitz, to be sure,' and Tennyson would 
have said the same. Borrow had none of these gifts 
as a letter-writer and no genius for friendship. The 
charm of his style, so indisputable in his best work, 
is absent from his letters; and his friends were 
alienated one after another. Borrow's undisciplined 
intellect and narrow upbringing were a curse 
to him, from the point of view of his own personal 
happiness, although they helped him to achieve exactly 
the work for which he was best fitted. Borrow's 
acquaintance with FitzGerald was commenced by the 
latter, who, in July 1853, sent from Boulge Hall, 
Suffolk, to Oulton Hall, in the same county, his recently 
published volume Six Dramas of Caldej^on. He 
apologises for making so free with ' a great man ; but, as 
usual, I shall feel least fear before a man like yourself 
who both do fine things in your own language and are 
deep read in those of others.' He also refers to 'our 
common friend Donne,' so that it is probable that they 
had met at Donne's house.^ The next letter, also 
published by Dr. Knapp, that FitzGerald writes to 
Borrow is dated from his home in Great Portland 

' Edward FitzCieiald to George Borrow, in Knapi)'s Life, vol. ii. p. 34G. 



352 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Street in 1856. He presents his friend with a Turkish 
Dictionary, and announces his coming marriage to 
Miss Barton, ' Our united ages amount to 96 ! — a 
dangerous experiment on both sides' — as it proved. 
The first reference to Borrow in the FitzGerald Letters 
issued by his authorised publishers is addressed to 
Professor Cowell in January 1857 : 

I was with Borrow a week ago at Donne's, and also at Yar- 
mouth three months ago : he is well, but not yet agreed with 
Murray. He read me a long translation he had made from the 
Turkish : which I could not admire, and his taste becomes 
stranger than ever.^ 

But Borrow 's genius if not his taste was always 
admired by FitzGerald, as the following letter among 
my Borrow Papers clearly indicates. Borrow had 
published The Romaiiy Rye at the beginning of 
May: 

To George Borrow, Esq., Oulton Hall. 

GoLDiNGTON Hall, Bedford, Muy 24/57.^ 
My dear Sir, — Your Book was put into my hands a week ago 
just as I was leaving London ; so I e'en carried it down here, and 
have been reading it under thebest Circumstances: — atsuch a Season 
— in the Fields as they now are — and in company with a Friend 
I love best in the world — who scarce ever reads a Book, but knows 
better than I do what they are made of from a hint. 

* The Works of Edward FitzGerald, vol. ii. p. 69 (Macmillan). 

* FitzGerald was staying with his friends Mr. and Mrs. W. K. Browne. 
There is no letter other than this one to Borrow to recall that visit^ 
which is, however, referred to in the FitzGerald Correspondence (Works, 
vol. ii. p. 75) by the following sentence : — ' When in Bedfordshire I put away 
almost all Books except Omar Khayyam ! which I could not help looking 
over in a Paddock covered with Buttercups and brushed by a delicious Breeze, 
while a dainty racing Filly of Browne's came startling up to wonder and 
to snuff about me.' The 'friend' of the letter was of course Mr. W. K. 
Browne, who was more of an open air man than a bookman. 







iJ 



OULTON COTTAGE FROM THF: BROAD 

Showing the sumnier-house on the left, from a sketch b\' Henrietta MacOubrey. 
The house which has replaced it has another aspect. 




Jar void <!r Sons 



THE SUMMER-HOUSE, OULTON, AS IT IS TO-DAV 



Which, when compared with Mrs. MacOubreys sketch, shows that it has 
been reroofed and probably rebuilt altogether. 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 353 

Well, lying in a Paddock of his, I have been travelling along 
with you to Horncastle, etc., — in a very delightful way for the 
most part ; something as I have travelled, and love to travel, with 
Fielding, Cervantes, and Robinson Crusoe — and a smack of all 
these there seems to me, with something beside, in your book. 
But, as will happen in Travel, there were some spots I didn't like 
so well — didn't like at all: and sometimes wished to myself that I, 
a poor ' Man of Taste,' had been at your Elbow (who are a Man of 
much more than Taste) to divert you, or get you by some means 
to pass lightlier over some places. But you wouldn't have heeded 
me, and won't heed me, and vmst go your own vvay, I think — And 
in the parts I least like, I am yet thankful for honest, daring, and 
original Thought and Speech such as one hardly gets in these 
mealy-mouthed days. It was very kind of you to send me your 
book. 

My Wife is already established at a House called ' Albert's 
Villa,' or some such name, at Gorlestone — but a short walk from 
you : and I am to find myself there in a few days. So I shall 
perhaps tell you more of my thoughts ere long. Now I shall finish 
this large Sheet with a Tetrastich of one Omar Khayyam who was 
an Epicurean Infidel some 500 years ago : 

b^^y L5^^ "''•^'^ ^'^ ^^^ ^'^^ 

jLp i.'i A^ ^\ i\^ jyXJ f^y ^^ 

and am yours very truly, Edward FitzGerald. 



' 1 am indebted to Mr. Edward Heron-Alleu for the iuformatiou that this 
is the original of the last verse but one in FitzGerald's first version of the 
Ruhdiydt : 

T 74. Ah Moon of my Delight, who knowest no wane. 
The Moon of Heaven is rising once again. 
How oft, hereafter rising, shall she look 
Through this same Garden after me — in vain. 



354 GEORGE BORROW AND HTS CIRCLE 

In a letter to Co well about the same time — June 5, 
1857 — FitzGerald writes that he is about to set out for 
Gorleston, Great Yarmouth : 

"Within hail almost lives George Borrow, who has lately 
published, and given me, two new volumes of Lavengro called 
Romany Rye^ with some excellent things, and some very bad (as I 
have made bold to write to him — how shall I face him !) You 
would not like the book at all I think. ^ 

It was Cowell, it will be remembered, who intro- 
duced FitzGerald to the Persian poet Omar, and after- 
wards regretted the act. The first edition of The 
Rubdiydt of Omar Khayyam appeared two years later, 
in 1859. Edward Byles Cowell was born in Ipswich 
in 1826, and he was educated at the Ipswich Grammar 
School. It was in the library attached to the Ipswich 
Library Institution that Cowell commenced the study 
of Oriental languages. In 1842 he entered the business 
of his father and grandfather as a merchant and 
maltster. When only twenty years of age he com- 
menced his friendship with Edward FitzGerald, and 
their correspondence may be found in Dr. Aldis 
Wright's FitzGerald Correspondence. In 1850 he left 
his brother to carry on the business and entered him- 

Tlie literal translation is : 

U^ l_5*"^ "^ \^ ^'^ l^'^'^"' 

Since no one will guarantee thee a to-morrow. 

Make thou happy now this lovesick heart ; 

Drink wine in the moonlight, O Moon, for the Moon 

Shall seek us long and shall not find us. 
1 The Works of Edward FitzGerald, vol. ii. p. 74 (Macmillan). 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 355 

self at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he passed six 
years. At intervals he read Greek with FitzGerald and, 
later, Persian. FitzGerald commenced to learn this 
last language, which was to bring him fame, when he 
was forty-four years of age. In 1856 Cowell was 
appointed to a Professorship of English History at 
Calcutta, and from there he sent FitzGerald a copy of 
the manuscript of Omar Khayyam, afterwards lent by 
FitzGerald to Borrow. Much earlier than this — in 
1853 — FitzGerald had written to Borrow : 

At Ipswich, indeed, is a man whom you would like to know, I 
think, and who would like to know you ; one Edward Cowell : a 
great scholar, if I may judge. . . . Should you go to Ipswich do 
look for him ! a great deal more worth looking for (I speak with 
no sham modesty, I am sure) than yours, — E. F. G.^ 

Twenty-six years afterwards — in 1879 — we find Fitz- 
Gerald writing to Dr. Aldis Wright to the effect that 
Cowell had been seized with ' a wish to learn Welsh 
under George Borrow ' : 

And as he would not venture otherwise, I gave him a Note of 
Introduction, and oiF he went, and had an hour with the old Boy, 
who was hard of hearing and shut up in a stuffy room, but cordial 
enough ; and Cowell was glad to have seen the Man, and tell him 
that it was his Wild Wales which first inspired a thirst for this 
language into the Professor.^ 

This introduction and meeting are described by 
Professor Cowell in the following letter : ^ 

Cambridge, December \0, 1892. 
Dear Sir, — I fear I cannot help you much by my reminiscences 

' Letters of Edward FitzGerald, vol. ii. p. 15. 
'■" Ibid., vol. iv. p. 85 (Macmillan). 

^ First published in The Sphere, October 31, 1903. The letter was written to 
Ml". James Hooper of Norwich. 



356 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

of Borrow. I never had the sh'ghtest interest in the gipsies, but 
I always had a corner in my heart for Spain and Wales, and con- 
sequently The Bible in Spain and Wild Wales have always been 
favourite books. But though Borrow's works were well known to 
me, I never saw him but once, and what I saw of him then made 
me feel that he was one of those men who put the best part of 
themselves into their books. We get the pure gold there without 
the admixture of alloy which daily life seemed to impart. 

I was staying one autumn at Lowestoft some ten years or more 
ago when I asked my dear old friend, Mr. Edward FitzGerald, to 
give me a letter of introduction to Mr. George Borrow. Armed 
with this I started on my pilgrimage and took a chaise for Oulton 
Hall. I remember as we drew near we turned into a kind of drift 
road through the fields where the long sweeping boughs of the 
trees hung so low that I lost my hat more than once as we drove 
along. My driver remarked that the old gentleman would not 
allow any of his trees to be cut. When we reached the hall I 
went in at the gate into the farmyard, but I could see nobody 
about anywhere. I walked up to the front door, but nobody 
answered my knock except some dogs, who began barking from 
their kennels. At last in answer to a very loud knock, the door 
was opened by an old gentleman whom I at once recognised by 
the engraving to be Borrow himself. I gave him my letter and 
introduced myself. He replied in a tone of humorous petulance, 
' What is the good of your bringing me a letter when I haven't 
got my spectacles to read it ? ' However, he took me into his 
room, where I fancy my knock had roused him from a siesta. We 
soon got into talk. He began by some unkind remarks about one 
or two of our common friends, but I soon turned the subject to 
books, especially Spanish and Welsh books. Here I own I was 
disappointed in his conversation. I talked to him about Ab 
Gwilym, whom he speaks so highly of in Wild Wales, but his 
interest was languid. He did not seem interested when I told 
him that the London Society of Cymmrodorion were publishing 
in their journal the Welsh poems of lolo Goch, the bard of Owen 
Glendower who fought with our Henry v., two of whose poems 
Borrow had given spirited translations of in Wild Wales. He 
told me he had heaps of translations from Welsh books somewhere 
in his cupboards but he did not know where to lay his hand on 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 357 

them. He did not show me one Welsh or Spanish book of any 
kind. You may easily imagine that I was disappointed with my 
interview and I never cared to visit him again. Borrow was a 
man of real genius, and his Bible in Spain and Wikl Wales are 
unique books in their way, but with all his knowledge of languages 
he was not a scholar. I should be the last person to depreciate 
his Sleeping Bard, for I owe a great deal to it as it helped me to 
read the Welsh original, but it is full of careless mistakes. The 
very title is wrong ; it should not be the Visions of the Sleeping 
Bard but the Visions of the Bard Sleep, as the bard or prophet 
Sleep shows the author in a series of dreams — his visions of life, 
death, and hell, which form the three chapters of the book. 

Borrow knew nothing of philology. His strange version of 'Om 
mani padme hum ' (Oh ! the gem in the lotus ho !) must have been 
taken from some phonetic representation of the sounds as heard 
by an ignorant traveller in China or Mongolia. 

I have written this long letter lured on by my recollections, but 
after all I can tell you nothing. Surely it is best that Borrow 
should remain a name ; we have the best part of him still living 
in his best books. 

' He gave the people of his best ; 
His worst he kept, his best he gave.' 

I don't see why we should trouble ourselves about his ' worst.' 
He had his weaker side like all of us, the foolish part of his nature 
as well as the wise ; but ' de mortuis nil nisi bonum ' especially 
applies in such cases. — I remain, dear sir, yours sincerely, 

E. B. CoWKLL. 

There is one short letter from FitzGerald to Borrow 
in Dr. Aldis Wright's FitzGerald Letters. It is dated 
June 1857 and from it we learn that FitzGerald lent 
Borrow the Calcutta manuscript of Omar Khayyam, 
upon which he based his own immortal translation, and 
from a letter to W. H. Thompson in 1861 we learn that 
Cowell, who had inspired the writing of FitzGerald's 
Omar Khayyam, Donne and Borrow were the only three 
friends to whom he had sent copies of his ' peccadilloes 



358 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

in verse ' as he calls his remarkable translation/ and this 
two years after it was published. A letter, dated July 
6, 1857," asks for the return of FitzGerald's copy of 
the Ouseley manuscript of Oma?^ Kliaijydm, Borrow 
having clearly already returned the Calcutta manu- 
script. This letter concludes on a pathetic note : 

My old Parson Crabbe is bowing down under epileptic fits, or 
something like, and I believe his brave old white head will soon 
sink into the village church sward. Why, our time seems coming. 
Make way, gentlemen ! 

Borrow comes more than once into tiie story of 
FitzGerald's great translation of Omar Khayyam, which 
in our day has caused so great a sensation, and deserves 
all the enthusiasm that it has excited as the 

' . . . golden Eastern lay. 

Than which I know no version done 

In English more divinely well,'' 

to quote Tennyson's famous eulogy. Cowell, to his 
after regret, for he had none of FitzGerald's dolce 
far niente paganism, had sent FitzGerald from Cal- 
cutta, where he was, the manuscript of Omar 
Khayyam's Rubdiydt in Persian, and FitzGerald was 
captured by it. Two years later, as we know, he pro- 
duced the translation, which was so much more than a 
translation. ' Omar breathes a sort of consolation to 
me,' he wrote to Cowell. ' Borrow is greatly delighted 
with your MS. of Omar which I showed him,' he says in 
another letter to Cowell (June 23, 1857), ' delighted at 
the terseness so unusual in Oriental verse.' ^ 

1 Works of Edward FitzGerald, vol. ii. p. 135 (Macmillan). 

2 Published by Dr. Knapp in Borrow s Life, vol. ii. p. 348 (Murray). 

^ We learn from FitzGerald that Borrow's eyesight gave way about this 
timej and his wife had to keep all books from him. 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 359 

The next two letters by FitzGerald from my 
Borrow Papers are of the year 1859, the year of the first 
publication of the Rubdiydt : 

To George Borrow, Esq. 

10 Marine Parade, Lowestoft. 

My dear Borhow, — I have come here with three nieces to give 
them sea air and change. They are all perfectly quiet, sensible, and 
unpretentious girls ; so as, if you will come over here any day or 
days, we will find you board and bed too, for a week longer at any 
rate. There is a good room below, which we now only use for 
meals, but which you and I can be quite at our sole ease in. 
Won't you come ? 

I purpose (and indeed have been some while intentioning) to go 
over to Yarmouth to look for you. But I write this note in hope 
it may bring you hither also. 

Donne has got his soldier boy home from India — Freddy — I 
always thought him a very nice fellow indeed. No doubt life is 
happy enough to all of them just now. Donne has been on a 
visit to the Highlands — which seems to have pleased him — I have 
got an MS. of Bahram and his Seven Castles (Persian), which I 
have not yet cared to look far into. Will you ? It is short, 
fairly transcribed, and of some repute in its own country, I hear. 
Cowell sent it me from Calcutta ; but it almost requires Jiis 
company to make one devote one's time to Persian, when, with 
what remains of one's old English eyes, one can read the Odyssey 
and Shakespeare. 

With compliments to the ladies, believe me. Yours very truly, 

Edwaed FitzGerald. 

I didn't know you were back from your usual summer tour till 
Mr. Cobb told my sister lately of having seen you. 

To George Borrow, Esq. 

Bath House, Lowestoft, October 10/59. 
Dear Borrow, — This time last year I was here and wrote to 



360 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

ask about you. You were gone to Scotland. Well, where are you 
now ? As I also said last year : ' If you be in Yarmouth and 
have any mind to see me I will go over some day ; or here I am 
if you will come here. And I am quite alone. As it is I would 
bus it to Yarmouth but I don"'t know if you and yours be there 
at all, nor if there, whereabout. If I don't hear at all I shall 
suppose you are not there, on one of your excursions, or not 
wanting; to be rooted out : a condition I too well understand. I 
was at Gorleston some months ago for some while; just after 
losing my greatest friend, the Bedfordshire lad who was crushed 
to death, coming home from hunting, his horse falling on him. 
He survived indeed two months, and I had been to bid him 
eternal adieu, so had no appetite for anything but rest — rest — 
rest. I have just seen his widow off from here. With kind 
regards to the ladies. Yours very truly, 

Edward FnzGERALD, 

In a letter to George Crabbe the third, and the 
grandson of the poet, in 1862, FitzGerald tells him 
that he has just been reading Sorrow's Wild Wales, 
' which / like well because I can hear him talking it. 
But I don't know if others will like it.' ' No one 
writes better English than Borrow in general,' he says. 
But FitzGerald, as a lover of style, is vexed with some 
of Borrow's phrases, and instances one : ' " The scenery 
was beautiful to a degree^ What degree ? When did 
this vile phrase arise?' The criticism is just, but Borrow, 
in common with many other great English authors 
whose work will live was not uniformly a good stylist. 
He has many lamentable fallings away from the ideals 
of the stylist. But he will, by virtue of a wonderful 
individuality, outlive many a good stylist. His four 
great books are immortal, and one of them is Wild 
Wales. 

We have a glimpse of FitzGerald in the follow- 
ing letter in my possession, by the friend who had 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 361 

introduced him to Borrow, William Bodham 
Donne : ^ 



To George Borrow, Esq. 

40 Wrymouth Street, Portland Place, W,, Novrmber 28/G2. 

My dear Borrow, — Many thanks for the copy of Wild Wales 
reserved for and sent to me by Mr. R. Cooke." Before this copy 
arrived I had obtained one from the London Library and read it 
through, not exactly stans pede in 2mu, but certainly almost at a 
stretch. I could not indeed lay it down, it interested me so much. 
It is one of the very best records of home travel, if indeed so 
strange a country as Wales is can properly be called home, I have 
ever met with. 

Immediately on closing the third volume I secured a few pages 
in Frasers Magazine for Wild Wales^iov though you do not stand 
in need of my aid, yet my notice will not do you a mischief, and 



' There are two or three references to Borrow in William Bodham Donne 
and his Friends, edited by Catharine B. Johnson (Methuen). The most 
important of these is in a letter from Donne to Bernard Barton, dated from 
Bur)' St. Edmunds, September 12th, 1848 : 

' We have had a great man here, and I have been walking with him and 
aiding him to eat salmon and mutton and drink port — George Borrow; and 
what is more, we fell in with some gypsies and I heard the speech of Egypt, 
which sounded wonderously like a medley of broken Spanish and dog Latin. 
Borrow's face lighted by the red turf fire of the tent was worth looking at. 
He is ashy white now, but twenty years ago, when his hair was like a raven's 
wing, he must have been hard to discriminate from a born Bohemian. Borrow 
is best on the tramp, if you can walk four and a half miles per hour — as 1 can 
with ease and do by choice — and can walk fifteen of them at a stretch — 
which I can compass also — then he will talk Iliads of adventures even better 
than his printed ones. He cannot abide those amateur pedestrians who 
saunter, and in his chair he is given to groan and be contradictory. But on 
Newmarket Heath, in Ilougham Woods, he is at home, and specially when 
he meets with a thorough vagabond like your present correspondent.' 

In June 1874 FitzGerald writes to Donne : 

'I saw in some Athenceiim a somewhat contemptuous notice of G. B.'s 
Rommany Lil or whatever the name is. I can easily understand that B. should 
not meddle with science of any sort ; but some years ago he would not have 
liked to be told so ; however, old age may have cooled him now.' 

^ Mr. Robert Cooke was a partner in John Murray's firm at this time. 



362 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

some of the reviewers of Lavengro were, I recollect, shocking 
blockheads, misinterpreting the letter and misconceiving the spirit 
of that work. I have, since we met in Burlington Arcade, been 
on a visit to FitzGerald. He is in better spirits by far than when 
I saw him about the same time in last year. He has his pictures 
and his chattels about him, and has picked up some acquaintance 
among the merchants and mariners of Woodbridge, who, although 
far below his level, are yet better company than the two old 
skippers he was consorting with in 1861. They — his present 
friends — came in of an evening, and sat and drank and talked, 
and I enjoyed their talk very much, since they discussed of what 
they understood, which is more than I can say generally of the 
fine folks I occasionally (very occasionally now) meet in London. 
I should have said more about your book, only I wish to keep it 
for print : and you don't need to be told by me that it is very 
good. — With best regards to Mrs. Borrow and Miss Clarke, I am, 
yours ever truly, W. B. Donne. 

The last letter from FitzGerald to Borrow is dated 
many years after the correspondence I have here 
printed,^ and from it we gather that there had been 
no correspondence in the interval.^ FitzGerald writes 
from Little Grange, Woodbridge, in January 1875, 
to say that he had received a message from Borrow 
that he would be glad to see him at Oulton. ' I 
think the more of it,' says FitzGerald, ' because 
I imagine, from what I have heard, that you have 
slunk away from human company as much as I 
have.' He hints that they might not like one another 
so well after a fifteen years' separation. He declares 
with infinite pathos that he has now severed himself 
from all old ties, has refused the invitations of old 
college friends and old school-fellows. To him there 
was no companionship possible for his declining days 
other than his reflections and verses. It is a fine letter, 

* It is to be found in Dr. Knapp's Life, vol. ii. pp. 248-9. 
^ 1 have a copy of FitzGerald's. 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 363 

filled with that graciousness of spirit that was ever a 
trait in FitzGerald's noble nature. The two men 
never met again. When Borrow died, in 1881, Fitz- 
Gerald, who followed him two years later, suggested to 
Dr. Aldis Wright, afterwards to be his (FitzGerald's) 
executor, who was staying with him at the time, that 
he should look over Borrow's books and manuscripts if 
his stepdaughter so desired. If this had been arranged, 
and Dr. Aldis Wright had written Borrow's life, there 
would have been no second biographer.^ 

' Dr. Aldis Wright tells me that he did go over to Oulton to see Mrs. 
MacOubrey, aud gave her the best advice he could, but it was neglected. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

WILD WALES 

The year 1854 was an adventurous one in Borrow's life, 
for he, so essentially a Celt, as Mr. Watts-Dunton has 
more than once reminded us,^ had in that year two 
interesting experiences of the 'Celtic Fringe.' He spent 
the first months of the year in Cornwall, as we have 
seen, and from July to November he was in Wales. 
That tour he recorded in pencilled note-books, four of 
which are in the Knapp Collection in New York, and 
are duly referred to in Dr. Knapp's biography, and two of 
which are in my possession. In addition to this I have 
the complete manuscript of Wild Wales in Borrow's 
handwriting, and many variants of it in countless, care- 
fully written pages. Therein lie the possibilities of a 
singularly interesting edition of Wild Wales should 
opportunity offer for its publication. When I examine 
the manuscript, with its demonstration of careful 
preparation, I do not wonder that it took Borrow eight 
years — from 1854 to 1862 — to prepare this book for 
the press. Assuredly we recognise here, as in all his 
books, that he realised Carlyle's definition of genius — 

1 ' Not oue drop of East Anglian blood was in the veins of Borrow's father, 
and very little in the veins of his mother. Borrow's ancestry was pure 
Cornish on one side, and on the other mainly French.'— Theodore Watts- 
Dunton : Introduction to The Romany Bye (Ward and Lock). 

364 



'WILD WALES' 



365 



' the transcendent capacity of taking trouble — first 
of all; 

It was on 27th July 1854 that Borrow, his wife 
and her daughter, Henrietta Clarke, set out on their 









r-\>-v^ 






















TF/ii) WALES IN ITS BEGINNINGS. 

Two pages from one of George Eorrow's Pocket-books with pencilled 
notes made on his journey through Wales. 



journey to North Wales. Dr. Knapp prints two kindly 
letters from Mrs. Borrow to her mother-in-law written 
from Llangollen on this tour. ' We are in a lovely quiet 
spot,' she writes, ' Dear George goes out exploring the 
mountains. . . . The poor here are humble, simple. 



366 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

and good.' In the second letter Mrs. Borrow records 
that her husband ' keeps a daily journal of all that 
goes on, so that he can make a most amusing book in a 
month.' Yet Borrow took eight years to make it. 
The failure of The JRomany Rye, which was due for 
publication before Wild Wales, accounts for this, and 
perhaps also the disappointment that another book, 
long since ready, did not find a publisher. In the 
letter from which I have quoted Mary Borrow tells 
Anne Borrow that her son will, she expects at Christmas, 
publish The Romany Rye, ' together with his poetry in 
all the European languages.' This last book had been 
on his hands for many a day, and indeed in Wild Wales 
he writes of ' a mountain of unpublished translations ' of 
which this book, duly advertised in The Romany Rye, 
was a part.^ 

After an ascent of Snowdon arm in arm with 
Henrietta, Mrs. Borrow remaining beliind. Borrow left 
his wife and daughter to find their way back to 
Yarmouth, and continued his journey, all of which is 
most picturesquely described in Wild Wales. Before 
that book was published, however, Borrow was to visit 
the Isle of Man, Scotland, and Ireland. He was to 
publish Lavengro (1857) ; to see his mother die (1858) ; 
and to issue his very limited edition of The Sleeping 
Bard (1860) ; and, lastly, to remove to Brompton 
(1860). It was at the end of the year 1862 that Wild 
Wales was published. It had been written during the 
two years immediately following the tour in Wales, in 
1855 and 1856. It had been announced as ready for 
publication in 1857, but doubtless the chilly reception 

^ The advertisement describes it thus : ' lu two volumes, Songs of Europe : 
or Metrical Translations from all the European Languages ; With Brief Prefatory 
Remarks on each Language and its Literature.' 



'WILD A¥ALES' 867 

of The Romany Rye in that year, of wliich we have 
written, had made Borrow lukewarm as to venturing 
once more before the pubhc. The pubHc was again 
irresponsive. The CornMll Magazine, then edited by 
Thackeray, declared the book to be 'tiresome reading.' 
The Spectator reviewer was more kindly, but nowhere 
was there any enthusiasm. Only a thousand copies were 
sold,^ and a second edition did not appear until 1865, 
and not another until seven years after Borrow's 
death. Yet the author had the encouragement that 
comes from kindly correspondents. Here, for example, 
is a letter that could not but have pleased him : 



West Hill Lopge, Highgate, 
Dec. 2Wi., 1862. 

Dear Sir, — We have had a great Christmas pleasure this year 
— the reading of your Wild FFa/^5, which has taken us so deliciously 
into the lovely fresh scenery and life of that pleasant mountain- 
land. My husband and myself made a little walking tour over 
some of your ground in North Wales this year ; my daughter and 
her uncle, Richard Howitt, did the same ; and we have been our- 
selves collecting material for a work, the scenes of which will be 
laid amidst some of our and your favourite mountains. But the 
object of my writing was not to tell you this ; but after assuring 
you of the pleasure your work has given us — to say also that in 
one respect it has tantalised us. You have told over and over 
again to fascinated audiences, Lope de Vega's ghost story, but still 
leave the poor reader at the end of the book longing to hear it 
in vain. 

May I ask you, therefore, to inform us in which of Lope de 
Vega's numerous works this same ghost story is to be found ? We 
like ghost stories, and to a certain extent believe in them, we 
deserve therefore to know the best ghost story in the world: 

Wishing for you, your wife and your Henrietta, all the com- 

* Wild Wales: Its People, Language, and Scenery. By George Borrow. 
,S vols. John Murray, 1862. 



368 GEORGE BORROW AXD HIS CIRCLE 



Ui % 



m. 






w\\ \m\i m^xmr 



mm 



i \^\)M 



JV Wit m\ W\ WvH. 



Mu. 



^iW\ . 






FACSIMILE OF THE TITLE-PAGE OF WILD WALES 

F -J- i ihi rijinai Manuscript in the possession of the Author 
of ' George BorroK and his Circle.' 



'WILD WALES 369 

pliments of the season in the best and truest sense of expression. 
— I am, dear sir, yours sincerely, Marv Howitt.^ 

The reference to Lope de Vega's ghost storv is due 
to the tact tliat in the fitty-fitth chapter of JHId Wales, 
Borrow, after declaring that Lope de Vega was ' one of 
the greatest geniuses that ever lived,' added, that among 
his tales may be found ' the best ghost story in the 
world." Dr. Knapp found the story in Borrow's hand- 
writing among the manuscripts that came to him, and 
gives it in full. In good truth it is but moderately 
interesting, although Borrow seems to have told it to 
many audiences when in Wales, but this perhaps pro- 
vides the humour of the situation. It seems clear that 
Borrow contemplated publishing Lope de Vega's ghost 
story in a later book. We note here, indeed, a letter of 
a much later date in which Borrow refers to the pos- 
sibility of a supplement to ff^i/d Wales, the only 
suggestion of such a book that I have seen, although 
there is plenty of new manuscript in my Borrow 
collection to have made such a book possible had 
Borrow been encouraged by his publisher and the 
public to write it. 

To J. Evan Williams, Esq. 

22 Hereford Sqlare, Broaiptox, Deer. 31, 1863. , 
Dear Sir, — I have received your letter and thank vou for the 
kind manner in which you are pleased to express yourself concern- 

' Mary Botham (1799-1888) was bom at Coleford, Gloucestershire, and 
married AVilliam Hewitt in 1821. The pair compiled many books together. 
The statement in the Dictionary of National Biography that 'nothing that 
either of them wrote will live ' is quite unwarranted. William Howitt's 
Homes and Haunts of the most eminent British Poets (Bentley, 2 vols., 1847) 
is still eagerly sought after for every good library. In Mary Hou-itt : An 
Autobiography (Isbister, 2 vols., 1889), a valuable book of reminiscences, 
there is no mention of Borrow. 

9 A 



370 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

ing me. Now for your questions. With respect to Lope De 
Vega's ghost story, I beg to say that I am thinking of publishing 



WIfw. \mm.v^ ^ K. ni^mn- \Wu 'Vvvu^fh^ mJ^ASr 













jhw rvvMv^ IJwU. uWVv ,itVw\ ^AK. M Im^o-vkl 









FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF WILD WALES 

From the original Manuscript in the possession of the Author 
of ' George Borrow and his Circle.' 

a supplement to my Wild Wales in which, amongst other things, 
I shall give a full account of the tale and point out where it is 
to be found. You cannot imagine the number of letters I receive 
on the subject of that ghost story. With regard to the Sclavonian 
languages, I wish to observe that they are all well deserving of 



'WILD WALES' 371 

study. The Servian and Bohemian contain a great many old 
traditionary songs, and the latter possesses a curious though not 
very extensive prose literature. The Polish has, I may say, been 
rendered immortal by the writings of Mickiewic/, whose 'Conrad 
Wallenrod ' is probably the most remarkable poem of the present 
century. The Russian, however, is the most important of all the 
Sclavonian tongues, not on account of its literature but because it 
is spoken by fifty millions of people, it being the dominant speech 
from the Gulf of Finland to the frontiers of China, There is a 
remarkable similarity both in sound and sense between many 
Russian and Welsh words, for example 'tchehr (lejo) is the 
Russian for forehead, ' tal ' is Welsh for the same ; ' iasnijy "* (neuter 
' iasnoe') is the Russian for clear or radiant, 'iesin' the Welsh, so that 
if it were grammatical in Russian to place the adjective after the 
noun as is the custom in Welsh, the Welsii compound ' Taliesin ' 
(Radiant forehead) might be rendered in Russian by ' Tcheloiasnoe,'' 
which would be wondrously like the Welsh name ; unfortunately, 
however, Russian grammar would compel any one wishing to 
Russianise ' Taliesin "■ to say not ' Tcheloiasnoe ' but ' lasnoetchelo,"' 
— Yours truly, George Borrow. 

Another letter that Borrow owed to his Wild 
Wales may well have place here. It will be recalled 
that in his fortieth chapter he waxes enthusiastic over 
Lewis Morris, the AVelsh bard, who was born in 
Anglesey in 1700 and died in 176.5. Morris's great- 
grandson, Sir Lewis Morris (1833-1907), the author of 
the once popular Epic of Hades, was twenty-nine years 
of age when he wrote to Borrow as follows : — 



To George Borrow, Esq. 

Reform Club, Dee. 29, 1862. 

Sir, — I have just finished reading your work on Wild Wales, 

and cannot refrain from writing to thank you for the very lifelike 

picture of the Welsh people. North and South, which, unlike other 

Englishmen, you have managed to give us. To ordinary English- 



372 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

men the language is of course an insurmountable bar to any real 
knowledge of the people, and the result is that within six hours of 
Paddington or Euston Square is a country nibbled at superficially 
by droves of holiday-makers, but not really better known than 
Asia Minor. I wish it were possible to get rid of all obstacles 
which stand in the way of the development of the Welsh people 
and the Welsh intellect. In the meantime every book which like 
yours tends to lighten the thick darkness which seems to hang 
round Wales deserves the acknowledgments of every true Welsh- 
man, I am, perhaps, more especially called upon to express my 
thanks for the very high terms in which you speak of my great- 
grandfather, Lewis Morris. I believe you have not said a word 
more than he deserves. Some of the facts which you mention 
with regard to him were unknown to me, and as I take a very 
great interest in everything relating to my ancestor I venture to 
ask you whether you can indicate any source of knowledge with 
regard to him and his wife, other than those which I have at 
present — viz. an old number of the Cambrian Register and some 
notices of him in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1760-70. There is 
also a letter of his in Lord Teignmouth"'s Life of Sir William 
Jones in which he claims kindred with that great scholar. Many 
of his manuscript poems and much correspondence are now in the 
library of the British Museum, most of them I regret to say a 
sealed book to one who like myself had yet to learn Welsh. But 
I am not the less anxious to learn all that can be ascertained 
about my great ancestor. I should say that two of his brothers, 
Richard and William, were eminent Welsh scholars. 

With apologies for addressing you so unceremoniously, and 
with renewed thanks, I remain. Sir, your obedient servant, 

Lewis Morris. 

All interesting letter to Borrow from another once 
popular writer belongs to this period : 



To George Borrow, Esq. 

The ' Press ' Office^ Strand, Westminster, Thursday. 
One who has read and delighted in everything Mr. Borrow 



'WILD WALES' 373 

has yet published ventures to say how great has been his dehght 
in reading Wild Wales. No philologist or linguist, I am yet an 
untiring walker and versifier : and really I think that few things 
are pleasanter than to walk and to versify. Also, well do I love 
good ale, natural drink of the English. If I could envy anything, 
it is your linguistic faculty, which unlocks to you the hearts of the 
unknown races of these islands — unknown, I mean, as to their real 
feelings and habits, to ordinary Englishmen — and your still higher 
faculty of describing your adventures in the purest and raciest 
English of the day. I send you a Danish daily journal, which 
you may not have seen. Once a week it issues articles in English. 
How beautiful (but of course not new to you) is the legend of 
Queen Dagmar, given in this number ! A noble race, the Danes : 
glad am I to see their blood about to refresh that which runs in 
the royal veins of England. Sorry and ashamed to see a Russell 
bullying and insulting them. Mortimer Collins.^ 

How greatly Borrow was disappointed at the com- 
parative failure of JVild Wales may be gathered from a 
curt message to his publisher which I find among his 
papers : 

Mr. Borrow has been applied to by a country bookseller, who 
is desirous of knowing why there is not another edition of Wild 
Wales, as he cannot procure a copy of the book, for which he receives 
frequent orders. That it was not published in a cheap form as 
soon as the edition of 1862 was exhausted has caused much 
surprise. 

Borrow, it will be remembered, left Wales at 
Chepstow, as recorded in the hundred and ninth and 
final chapter of JFild Wales, ' where I purchased a first 
class ticket, and ensconcing myself in a comfortable 
carriage, was soon on my way to London, where I 
arrived at about four o'clock in the morning.' In the 

1 Edward James Mortimer Collins (1827-1870), once bore tlie title of 
'King of the Bohemians' among his friends; wrote Sweet and Twenty and 
many other novels once widely popular. 



374 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

following letter to his wife there is a slight discrepancy, 
of no importance, as to time : 

To Mrs, George Borrow 

58a Pall Mall, London, 
Dear Wife Carreta, — I arrived here about five o'clock this 
morning — time I saw you. I have walked about 250 miles, I walked 
the whole way from the North to the South — then turning; to the 
East traversed Glamorganshire and the county of Monmouth, and 
came out at Chepstow. My boots were worn up by the time I 
reached Swansea, and was obliged to get them new soled and 
welted, I have seen wonderful mountains, waterfalls, and people. 
On the other side of the Black Mountains I met a cartload of 
gypsies ; they were in a dreadful rage and were abusing the country 
right and left. My last ninety miles proved not very comfortable, 
there was so much rain. Pray let me have some money by 
Monday as I am nearly without any, as you may well suppose, for 
I was three weeks on my journey. I left you on a Thursday, and 
reached Chepstow yesterday, Thursday, evening. I hope you, my 
mother, and Hen. are well. I have seen Murray and Cooke. — 
God bless you, yours, George Borrow. 

(Keep this.) 

Before Borrow put the finishing touches to JFild 
Wales he repeated his visit of 1854. This was in 1857, 
the year of The Romany Rye. Dr. Knapp records the 
fact through a letter to INIr. John INIurray from Shrews- 
bury, in which he discusses the possibility of a second 
edition of TJie Romany Rye : ' I have lately been taking 
a walk in Wales of upwards of five hundred miles,' he 
writes. This tour lasted from August 23rd to October 
5th. I find four letters to his wife that were written 
in this holiday. He does not seem to have made any 
use of this second tour in his Wild Wales, although I 
have abundance of manuscript notes upon it in my 
possession. 



*WILD WALES' 375 

To Mrs. George Borrow 

Tbnby, Tuesday, 25. 
My dear Carreta, — Since writing to you I have been rather 
unwell and was obliged to remain two days at Sandypool. The 
weather has been horribly hot and affected my head and likewise 
my sight slightly ; moreover one of the shoes hurt my foot. I 
came to this place to-day and shall presently leave it for Pembroke 
on my way back, I shall write to you from there. I shall return 
by Cardigan. What I want you to do is to write to me directed to 
the post office, Cardigan (in Cardiganshire), and either inclose a post 
office order for five pounds or an order from Lloyd and Co. on the 
banker of that place for the same sum ; but at any rate write or I 
shall not know what to do. I would return by railroad, but in 
that event I must go to London, for there are no railroads from 
here to Shrewsbury. I wish moreover to see a little more. Just 
speak to the banker and don't lose any time. Send letter, and 
either order in it, or say that I can get it at the bankers, I hope 
all is well. God bless you and Hen. George Borrow. 



To Mrs. George Borrow 

Trecastle, Brecknockshire^ South Wales, August Vjth. 
Dear Carreta, — I write to you a few words from this place ; to- 
morrow I am going to Llandovery and from there to Carmarthen ; 
for the first three or four days I had dreadful weather. I got 
only to Worthen the first day, twelve miles — on the next to 
Montgomery, and so on. It is now very hot, but I am very well, 
much better than at Shrewsbury. I hope in a few days to write 
to you again, and soon to be back to you. God bless you and 
Hen. G. Borrow. 



To Mrs. George Borrow 

LampeteRj 3rrf September 1857. 
My dear Carreta, — I am making the best of my way to 
Shrewsbury (My face is turned towards Mama). I write this from 



376 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Lampeter, where there is a college for educating clergymen 
intended for Wales, which I am going to see. I shall then start 
for Badnor by Tregaron, and hope soon to be in England. I 
have seen an enormous deal since I have been away, and have 
walked several hundred miles. Amongst other places I have seen 
St. David's, a wonderful half ruinous cathedral on the S. Western 
end of Pembrokeshire, but I shall be glad to get back. God bless 
you and Hen. George Borrow. 

Henrietta ! Do you know who is handsome ? 



To Mrs. George Borrow 

Presteyne, Radnorshire^ Monday morning. 
Dear Carreta, — I am just going to start for Ludlow, and 
hope to be at Shrewsbury on Tuesday night if not on Monday 
morning. God bless you and Hen. G. Borrow. 

When I get back I shall have walked more than 400 miles. 

In Wild Wales we have George Borrow in his 
most genial mood. There are none of the hair- 
breadth escapes and grim experiences of The Bible in 
Spain, none of the romance and the glamour of 
Lavengro and its sequel, but there is good humour, 
a humour that does not obtain in the three more 
important works, and there is an amazing amount of 
frank candour of a biographical kind. We even have 
a reference to Isopel Berners, referred to by Captain 
Bosvile as ' the young woman you used to keep 
company with ... a fine young woman and a 
virtuous.' It is the happiest of Borrow's books, and 
not unnaturally. He was having a genuine holiday, 
and he had the companionship during a part of it of his 
wife and daughter, of whom he was, as this book is 
partly written to prove, very genuinely fond. He 
also enjoyed the singularly felicitous experience of 



' WILD WALES ' 377 

harking back upon some of his earhest memories. He 
was able to retrace the steps he took in the Welsh 
language during his boyhood : 

That night I sat up very late reading the life of Twm 
OV Nant, Avritten by himself in choice Welsh. . . , The life I had 
read in my boyhood in an old Welsh magazine, and I now read it 
again witli great zest, and no wonder, as it is probably the most 
remarkable autobiography ever penned. 

It is in this ecstatic mood that he passes through 
Wales. Let me recall the eulogy on ' Gronwy ' 
Owen, and here it may be said that Borrow rarely got 
his spelling correct of the proper names of his various 
literary heroes, in the various Norse and Celtic tongues 
in which he delighted.^ But how much Borrow 
delighted in his poets may be seen by his eulogy on 
Goronwy Owen, which in its pathos recalls Carlyle's 
similar eulogies over poor German scholars who inter- 
ested him, Jean Paul Richter and Heyne, for example. 
Borrow ignored Owen's persistent intemperance and 
general impracticability. Here and here only, indeed, 
does he remind one of Carlyle." He had a great capacity 
for hero-worship, although the two were not interested 
in the same heroes. His hero-worship of Owen took him 
over large tracks of country in search of that poet's 

^ Goronwy or Gronow Owen (1723-1769), born at Rhos Fawr in Anglesey, 
and died at St. Andrews, Brunswick County, Virginia. 

^ Borrow had at many points certain affinities to Carlyle's hero Johnson, 
but lacked his epigrammatic wit — and much else. But he seems to have desired 
to emulate Johnson in one particular, as we find in the following dialogue: — 

' I wouldn't go on foot there this night for fifty pounds.' 

'Why not.?' said I. 

'For fear of being knocked down by the colliers, who will be all out and 
drunk.' 

'If not more than two attack me,' said I, 'I shan't so much mind. With 
this book I am sure I can knock down one, and I think I can find play for 
the other with my fists.' 



378 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

birthplace. He writes of the dehght he takes in inspect- 
ing the birth-places and haunts of poets. ' It is because 
I am fond of poetry, poets, and their haunts, that I am 
come to Anglesey.'^ ' I proceeded on my way,' he says 
elsewhere, *in high spirits indeed, having now seen not 
only the tomb of the Tudors, but one of those sober 
poets for which Anglesey has always been so famous.' 
And thus it is that JVild Wales is a high-spirited book, 
which will always be a delight and a joy not only to 
Welshmen, who, it may be hoped, have by this time 
forgiven ' the ecclesiastical cat ' of Llangollen, but to 
all who rejoice in the great classics of the English 
tongue. 

* M'hen searching for the home of Goronwy Owen Borrow records a 
meeting with one of his descendants — a little girl of seven or eight years of 
age^ named Ellen Jones, who in recent years has been interviewed as to her 
impressions of Borrow's visit. ' He did speak funny Welsh,' she says, 
'. . . he could not pronounce the " 11." He had plenty of words, but bad 
pronunciation.' — Herbert Jenkins : Life of Borrow, p. 418. But Borrow in 

Wild Wales frequently admits his imperfect ac(iuaintance with spoken 

Welsh. 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

LIFE IN LONDON, 1860-1874 

George Borrow's earlier visits to London are duly 
recorded, with that glamour of wliich he was a master, 
in the pages of Lavengro. Who can cross London 
Bridge even to-day without thinking of the apple- 
woman and her copy of Moll Flanders \ and many 
passages of Borrow's great book make a very special 
appeal to the lover of London. Then there was that 
visit to the Bible Society's office made on foot from 
Norwich, and the expedition a few months later to 
pass an examination in the Manchu language. When 
he became a country squire and the author of the very 
successful Bible 'm Spain Borrow frequently visited 
London, and his various residences may be traced from 
his letters. Take, for example, these five notes to 
his wife, the first apparently written in 1848, but all 
undated : 

To Mrs. George Borrow 

Tuesday afternoon. 

My dear Wife, — I just write you a line to tell you that I am 
tolerably well as I hope you are. Every thing is in confusion 
abroad. The French King has disappeared and will probably 
never be heard of, though they are expecting him in England. 
Funds are down nearly to eighty. The Government have given 
up the income tax and people are very glad of it. / am not. 

379 



380 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

With respect to the funds, if I were to sell out I should not know 
what to do with the money. J. says they will rise, I do not 
think they will, they may, however, fluctuate a little. — Keep up 
your spirits, my heart's dearest, and kiss old Hen. for me. 

G. B. 

To Mrs. George Borrow 

53a, Pall Mall. 
Dear Wife Carreta, — I write you a line as I suppose you 
will be glad to have one. I dine to-night with Murray and 
Cooke, and we are going to talk over about The Sleeping Bard ; 
both are very civil. I have been reading hard at the Museum and 
have lost no time. Yesterday I went to Greenwich to see the 
Leviathan. It is almost terrible to look at, and seems too large 
for the river. It resembles a floating town — the paddle is 60 feet 
high. A tall man can stand up in the funnel as it lies down, 'Tis 
sad, however, that money is rather scarce. I walked over Black- 
heath and thought of poor dear Mrs. Watson. I have just had a 
note from FitzGerald. We have had some rain but not very 
much. London is very gloomy in rainy weather. I was hoping 
that I should have a letter from you this morning. I hope you 
and Hen. have been well. — God bless you, 

George Borrow. 

To Mrs. George Borrow 

Pall Mall, 53a, Saturday. 
Dear Carreta, — I am thinking of coming to you on Thursday. 
I do not know that I can do anything more here, and the dulness 
of the weather and the mists are making me ill. Please to send 
another five pound note by Tuesday morning. I have spent 
scarcely anything of that which you sent except what I owe to 
Mrs. W., but I wish to have money in my pocket, and Murray 
and Cooke are going to dine with me on Tuesday ; I shall be glad 
to be with you again, for I am very much in want of your society. 
I miss very much my walks at Llangollen by the quiet canal ; but 
what 's to be done ? Everything seems nearly at a standstill in 
London, on account of this wretched war, at which it appears to 
me the English are getting the worst, notwithstanding their 



LIFE IN LONDON, 1860-1874 381 

boasting. They thought to settle it in an autumn's clay ; they 
little knew the Russians, and they did not reflect that just after 
autmnn comes winter, which has ever been the Russians'' friend. 
Have you heard anything about the rent of the Cottage ? I 
should have been glad to hear from you this morning. Give my 
love to Hen. and may God bless you, dear. 

(Keep this.) George Bourow. 

To Mrs. George Borrow 

No. 53a Pall Mall. 
Dear Caureta, — I hope you received my last letter written 
on Tuesday. I am glad that I came to London. I find myself 
much the better for having done so. I was going on in a very 
spiritless manner. Everybody I have met seems very kind and 
glad to see me. Murray seems to be thoroughly staunch. Cooke, 
to whom I mentioned the F.T., says that Murray was delighted 
with the idea, and will be very glad of the 4th of Lavengro. I 
am going to dine with Murray to-day, Thursday. W. called 
upon me to-day. I wish you would send me a blank cheque, in a 
letter so that if I want money I may be able to draw for a little. 
I shall not be long from home, but now I am here I wish to do 
all that's necessary. If you send me a blank cheque, I suppose 
W. or Murray would give me the money. I hope you got my 
last letter. I received yours, and Cooke has just sent the two 
copies of Lavengro you wrote for, and I believe some engravings 
of the picture. I shall wish to return by the packet if possible, 
and will let you know when I am coming. I hope to write again 
shortly to tell you some more news. How is mother and Hen., 
and how are all the creatures ? I hope all well. I trust you like 
all I propose — now I am here I want to get two or three things, 
to go to the Museum, and to arrange matters. God bless you. 
Love to mother and Hen. George Borrow. 



To INlrs. George Borrow 

No. 58 Jermyn Street, St. James. 
Dear Carreta, — I got here safe, and upon the whole had not 



382 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

so bad a journey as might be expected. I put up at the Spread 
Eagle for the night for I was tired and hungry ; have got into 
my old lodgings as you see, those on the second floor, they are 
very nice ones, with every convenience ; they are expensive, it is 
true, but they are cheerful, which is a grand consideration for me. 
I have as yet seen nobody, for it is only now a little past eleven. 
I can scarcely at present tell you what my plans are, perhaps 
to-morrow I shall write again. Kiss Hen., and God bless you. 

G.B. 

It was in the year 1843 that Borrow, on a visit to 
London following upon the success of The Bible in 
Spain, sat to Henry Wyndham Phillips for his portrait 
at the instigation of Mr. Murray, who gave Borrow a 
replica, retaining for himself Phillips's more finished 
picture, which has been reproduced again and again in 
the present Mr. Murray's Borrow productions.^ 

Borrow was in London in 1845 and again in 1848. 
There must have been other occasional visits on the 
way to this or that starting point of his annual holiday, 
but in 1860 Borrow took a house in London, and he 
resided there until 1874, when he returned to Oulton. 
In a letter to Mr. John Murray, written from Ireland 

^ Tlie frontispiece to the present volume is from the replica in the 
possession of Borrow's executor, who has kindly permitted me to have it 
photographed for the purpose. There are slight and interesting variations 
from Mr. Murray's portrait. Phillips (1820-1868), the artist of these pictures, 
is often confused with his father, Thomas (1770-1845), the Royal Academician 
and a much superior painter, who, by the way, painted many portraits of 
authors for Mr. John Murray. Henry Phillips was never an II. A. A letter 
from Phillips to Borrow in my possession shows that he visited the latter at 
Oulton. The portrait of Borrow is pronounced by Henry Dalrymple, his 
schoolfellow, from whose manuscript we have already quoted, to be ' very 
like him.' This fact is the more remarkable as the only photograph of 
Borrow that is known, one taken in a group with Mrs. Simms Reeve of 
Norwich in 1848 — five years later — has many points of difference. The 
reader will here be able to compare the two portraits in this book. A third 
portrait of Borrow — a crude painting by his brother John taken in his early 
years, is now in the London National Portrait Gallery. 



LIFE IN LONDON, 1860-1874 383 

ill November 1859, JNIrs. Borrow writes to the effect 
that in the spring of the i'ollowing year she will wish 
to look round 'and select a pleasant holiday residence 
within three to ten miles of I^ondon.' There is no 
doubt that a succession of winters on Oulton Broad 
had been very detrimental to Mrs. Borrow's health, 
although they had no effect upon Borrow, who 
bathed there with equal indifference in winter as in 
summer, having, as he tells us in fVild Wales, ' always 
had the health of an elephant.' And so Borrow and his 
wife arrived in London in June, and took temporary 
lodgings at 21 Montagu Street, Portman Square. In 
September they went into occupation of a house in 
Brompton — 22 Hereford Square, which is now com- 
memorated by a County Council tablet. Here Borrow 
resided for fourteen years, and here his wife died on 
January 30, 1869. She was buried in Brompton 
Cemetery, where Borrow was laid beside her twelve 
years later. For neighbour, on the one side, the Bor- 
rows had Mr. Robert Collinson and, on the other. 
Miss Frances Power Cobbe and her companion, Miss 
I\I. C. Lloyd. From Miss Cobbe we have occasional 
glimpses of Borrow, all of them unkindly. She was of 
Irish extraction, her father having been grandson of 
Charles Cobbe, Archbishop of Dublin. Miss Cobbe was 
an active woman in all kinds of journalistic and philan- 
thropic enterprises in the London of the 'seventies and 
'eighties of the last century, writing in particular in the 
now defunct newspaper, the Echo, and she wrote 
dozens of books and pamphlets, all of them forgotten 
except \ie.Y Autobiography,^ in which she devoted several 

1 Life of Frances Power Cobbe as told by Herself With Additions by the 
Writer and Introduction by Blanche Atkinson. 2 vols. ^ 1904. Frances Power 
Cobbe was born in Dublin in 1822^ and died at Hengwrt in 1904. 



384 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

pages to her neighbour in Hereford Square. Rorrow 
had no sympathy with fanatical women with many 
' isms,' and the pair did not agree, although many 
neighbourly courtesies passed between them for a time. 
Here is an extract from Miss Cobbe's Autobiog7'aphy : 

George Borrow, who, if he were not a gypsy by blood, ought 
to have been one, was for some years our near neighbour in Here- 
ford Square. My friend ^ was amused by his quaint stories and 
his (real or sham) enthusiasm for Wales, and cultivated his 
acquaintance. I never liked him, thinking him more or less of a 
hypocrite. His missions, recorded in The Bible in Spain, and his 
translations of the Scriptures into the out-of-the-way tongues, for 
which he had a gift, were by no means consonant with his real 
opinions concerning the veracity of the said Bible. 

One only needs to quote this by the light of the 
story as told so far in these pages to see how entirely 
Miss Cobbe misunderstood Borrow, or rather how little 
insight she was able to bring to a study of his curious 
character. The rest of her attempt at interpretation is 
largely taken up to demonstrate how much more clever 
and more learned she was than Borrow. Altogether it 
is a sorry spectacle this of the pseudo-philanthropist 
relating her conversations with a man broken by mis- 
fortune and the death of his wife. Many of Miss 
Cobbe's statements have passed into current biographies 
and have doubtless found acceptance.^ I do not find 

1 Miss Lloyd, who was a Welshwoman. Miss Cobbe lived with her and 
was doubtless a jealous woman. There are many kindly letters from Miss 
Lloyd to Borrow in my collection. She seems always to be anxious to invite 
him to her house. 

^ About three months before her death Miss Cobbe replied to an inquiry 
made by Mr. James Hooper of Norwich concerning her estimate of Borrow. 
As it is all but certain that Borrow was never intoxicated in his life, we 
may find the letter of interest only as giving a point of view : 

' Hengwrt, Dolgelley, N. AVales, Jan. 26, 1904. 
* I can have no objection to your asking me if my little sketch of George 



LIFE IN LONDON, 1860-1874 385 

them convincing. Archdeacon Whately on the other 
hand tells us that he always found Borrow ' most civil 
and hospitable,' and his sister gives us the following 
* impression ' : 

When Mr. Borrow returned from this Spanish journey, which 
had been full, as we all know, of most entertaining adventures, 
related with much liveliness and spirit by himself, he was regarded 
as a kind of ' lion ' in the literary circles of London. When we 
first saw him it was at the house of a lady who took great pleasure 
in gathering 'celebrities' in various ways around her, and our 
party was struck with the appearance of this renowned traveller — 
a tall, thin, spare man with prematurely white hair and intensely 
dark eyes, as he stood upright against the wall of one of the 
drawing-rooms and received the homage of lion-hunting guests, 
and listened in silence to their unsuccessful attempts to make him 
talk.'i 

Another reminiscence of Borrow in London is 
furnished by Mr. A. T. Story, who writes : ^ 

I had the pleasure of meeting Borrow on several occasions in 
London some forty years ago. I cannot be quite certain of the 

Borrow in my Life is my dernier mot about him. If I were to give my dernier 
mot, it would be much more to his disadvantage than anything I liked to in- 
sert in my biography. I see his American biographer has accused me of 
' bitterness.' I do not think that what is contained in my book is ' bitter' at 
all. But if 1 were to have told my last interview with him, — when I was 
driven practically to drive him out of our house, more or less drunk, or mad 
with some opiate — the charge might have had some colour. He was not a 
good man, and not a true or honourable one, by any manner of means.' 

Here assuredly we miss the fine charity which led Goethe's friend, the 
Duchess of Weimar, to urge that there was a special moral law for poets. 
Not for one moment does it occur to Miss Cobbe that her neighbour was a 
man of genius who had written four imperishable contributions to English 
literature. To her he was merely a conceited, brusque old man. Concern- 
ing the adage that ' no man is a hero to his valet,' well may Carlyle remark 
that that is more often the fault of the valet than of the hero. 

^ Personal and Fainily Glimpses of Remarkable People. By Edward W. 
Whately. London : Hodder and Stoughton, 1889. 

^ Loudon Daily Chronicle, July 9, 1913. 

2b 



386 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

year, but I think it was either in 1872 or '73. I saw him first in 
James Burns's publishing office in Southampton Row. I happened 
to call just as a tall, strongly-built man with an unforgettable 
face was leaving. When he had gone, Mr. Burns asked : ' Do you 
know who that gentleman was ? "* and when I said I did not, he said : 
' He is the man whose book, The Bible in Spain, I saw you take 
down from the shelf there the other day and read.' ' What, George 
Borrow ? ' I exclaimed. He nodded, and then said Borrow had 
called several times. 

A few days later I had an opportunity of making the good 
man's acquaintance and hearing a conversation between him and 
Mr. Burns. They talked about Spiritualism, with which Borrow 
had very little patience, though, after some talk he consented to 
attend a seance to be held that evening in Burns's drawing-room. 
We sat together, and I had the pleasure of hearing from time to 
time his grunts of disapproval. When the discourse — ' in trance ' — 
was over, he asked me if I believed in 'this sort of thing,' and when 
I said I was simply an investigator he remarked, 'That's all right, 
I, too, am an investigator— of things in general — and it would not 
take me long to sum up that little man (the medium) as a hum- 
bug, but a very clever humbug.' 

That evening I had a long walk and a talk with him, and after 
that several other opportunities of talk, the last being one night 
when I chanced upon him on Westminster Bridge. It was a 
superb starlight night, and he was standing about midway over 
the bridge gazing down into the river. When I approached him 
he said : ' I have been standing here for twenty minutes looking 
round and meditating. There is not another city like this in the 
world, nor anoth.' bridge like this, nor a river, nor a Parliament 
House like that — with its little men making little laws — which 
the Lawgiver that made yonder stars — look at them ! — is con- 
tinually confounding — and will confound. O, we little men ! How 
long before we are dust .'' And the stars there, how they smile at 
our puny lives and tricks — here to-day, gone tj-morrow. And 
yet to-night how glorious it is to be here ! ' 

So he rhapsodised. And then it was, ' Where can we get a 
bite and sup ? I 've been footing it all day among the hills there 
— the Surrey Hills — for a breath of fresh air.' 

In appearance, at the time I knew him, Borrow was neither 



LIFE IN LONDON, 1860-1874 387 

thin nor stout, but well proportioned and apparently of great 
strength. 

During this sojourn in London, which was under- 
taken because Oulton and Yarmouth did not agree 
with his wife, Borrow suffered the tragedy of her loss. 
Borrow dragged on his existence in London for another 
five years, a much broken man. It is extraordinary 
how little we know of Borrow during that fourteen 
years' sojourn in London ; how rarely we meet him in the 
literary memoirs of this period. Happily one or two 
pleasant friendships relieved the sadness of his days ; 
and in particular the reminiscences of Walter Theodore 
Watts-Dunton assist us to a more correct appreciation 
of the Borrow of these last years of London life. Of 
Mr. Watts-Dunton's ' memories,' we shall write in 
our next chapter. Here it remains only to note that 
Borrow still continued to interest himself in his various 
efforts at translation, and in 1861 and 1862 the editor of 
Once a Week printed various ballads and stories from his 
pen. The volumes of this periodical are before me, and I 
find illustrations by Sir John Millais, Sir E. J. Poynter, 
Simeon Solomon and George Du Maurier; stories by 
Mrs. Henry Wood and Harriet Martineau, and articles 
by Walter Thornbury. 

In 1862 Wild Wales was published, as we have seen. 
In 1865 Henrietta married William MacOubrey, and in 
the following year. Borrow and his wife went to visit 
the pair in their Belfast home. In the beginning of the 
year 1869 Mrs. Borrow died, aged seventy-three. 
There are few records of the tragedy that are worth 
perpetuating.^ Borrow consumed his own smoke. 
With his wife's death his life was indeed a wreck. 

1 There is an interview between Borrow and his wife's medical attendant. 
Dr. Playfairj recorded in Herbert Jenkins's Life, that is full of poignancy. 



388 GEORGE BORKOW AND HIS CIRCLE 

No wonder he was so *rude' to that least perceptive 
of women, Miss Cobbe. Some four or five years more 
Borrow lingered on in London, cheered at times by 
walks and talks with Gordon Hake and Watts-Dunton, 
and he then returned to Oulton — a most friendless 
man: — 

What land has let the dreamer from its gates^ 
What face beloved hides from him away ? 

A dreamer outcast from some world of dreams, 
He goes for ever lonely on his way. 

Like a great pine upon some Alpine height. 
Torn by the winds and bent beneath the snow 

Half overthrown by icy avalanche, 

The lone of soul throughout the world must go. 

Alone among his kind he stands alone, 

Torn by the passions of his own strange heart. 

Stoned by continual wreckage of his dreams, 
He in the crowd for ever is apart. 

Like the great pine that, rocking no sweet rest, 
Swings no young birds to sleep upon the bough, 

But where the raven only comes to croak — 

' There lives no man more desolate than thou ! ' 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

FRIENDS OF LATER YEARS 

We should know little enough of George Borrow's 
later years, were it not for his friendship with Thomas 
Gordon Hake and Theodore Watts-Dunton. Hake 
was born in 1809 and died in 1895. In 1839 he settled 
at Bury St. Edmunds as a physician, and he resided 
there until 1853, Here he was frequently visited by 
the Borrows. We have already quoted his prophecy 
concerning Lavengro that 'its roots will strike deep 
into the soil of English letters.' In 1853 Dr. Hake and 
his family left Bury for the United States, where they 
resided for some years. Returning to England they 
lived at Roehampton and met Borrow occasionally in 
London. During these years Hake was, according to Mr . 
W. M. Rossetti, ' the earthly Providence of the Rossetti 
family,' but he was not, as his Blemoirs show, equally 
devoted to Borrow. In 1872, however, he went to live 
in Germany and Italy for a considerable period. Con- 
cerning the relationship between Borrow and Hake, 
Mr. Watts-Dunton has written : 

After Hake went to live in Germany, Borrow told me a good 
deal about their intimacy, and also about his own early life : for, 
reticent as he naturally was, he and 1 got to be confidential and 
intimate. His friendship with Hake began when Hake was practis- 
ing as a physician in Norfolk. It lasted during the greater part 
of Borrow's later life. When Borrow was living in London his 



390 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

great delight was to walk over on Sundays from Hereford Square 
to Coombe End, call upon Hake, and take a stroll with him over 
Richmond Park, They both had a passion for herons and for 
deer. At that time Hake was a very intimate friend of my own, 
and having had the good fortune to be introduced by him to 
Borrow I used to join the two in their walks. Afterwards, when 
Hake went to live in Germany, I used to take those walks with 
Borrow alone. Two more interesting men it would be impossible 
to meet. The remarkable thing- was that there was between them 
no sort of intellectual sympathy. In style, in education, in experi- 
ence, whatever Hake was. Borrow was not. Borrow knew almost 
nothing of Hake's writings, either in prose or in verse. His ideal 
poet was Pope, and when he read, or rather looked into, Hake's 
World's Epitaph, he thought he did Hake the gi'eatest honour by 
saying, ' there are lines here and there that are nigh as good as 
Pope ' ! 

On the other hand, Hake's acquaintance with Borrow's works 
was far behind that of some Borrovians who did not know Lavengro 
in the flesh, such as Saintsbury and Mr. Birrell. Borrow was shy, 
angular, eccentric, rustic in accent and in locution, but with a 
charm for me, at least, that was irresistible. Hake was polished, 
easy and urbane in everything, and, although not without pre- 
judice and bias, ready to shine generally in any society. 

So far as Hake was concerned the sole link between them was 
that of reminiscence of earlier days and adventures in Borrow's 
beloved East Anglia. Among many proofs I would adduce of this 
I will give one. I am the possessor of the MS. of Borrow's 
Gypsies of Spain, written partly in a Spanish notebook as he moved 
about Spain in his colporteur days. It was my wish that Hake 
would leave behind him some memorial of Borrow more worthy of 
himself and his friend than those brief reminiscences contained in 
Memoirs of Eighty Years. I took to Hake this precious relic of one 
of the most u-onderful men of the nineteenth century, in order to 
discuss with him differences between the MS. and the printed text. 
Hake was writing in his invalid chair, — writing verses. ' What 
does it all matter?' he said. 'I do not think you understand 
Lavengro,' I said. Hake replied, 'And yet Lavengro had an 
advantage over me, for A^ understood nobody. Every individuality 
with which he was brought into contact had, as no one knows 



FRIENDS OF LATER YEARS 391 

better than you, to be tinged with colours of his own before he could 
see it at all/ That, of course, was true enough ; and Hake's 
asperities when speaking of Borrow in Memoh'S of Eighty Years, — 
asperities which have vexed a good many Borrovians, — simply 
arose from the fact that it was impossible for two such men to 
understand each other. When I told him of Mr. Lang's angry 
onslaught upon Borrow in his notes to the Waverley Novels, on 
account of his attacks upon Scott, he said, ' Well, does he not 
deserve it .'' ' When I told him of Miss Cobbe's description of 
BoiTow as & poseur, he said to me, ' I told you the same scores of 
times. But I saw Borrow had bewitched you during that first 
walk under the rainbow in Richmond Park. It was that rain- 
bow, I think, that befooled you.' Borrow's affection for Hake, 
however, was both strong and deep, as I saw after Hake had gone 
to Germany and in a way dropped out of Borrow's ken. Yet 
Hake was as good a man as ever Borrow was, and for certain 
others with whom he was brought in contact as full of a genuine 
affection as Borrow was himself.^ 



^ Theodore Watts-Duntou's memoir of Thomas Gordon Hake in the 
AthencBum, January 19, 1895. 

An interesting letter that I have received from Mr. Watts-Dunton clears 
up several points and may well ha\e place here : — 

'The Pines, 11 Putney Hill, S.W., 315^ May 1913. 

' You ask me what I have written upon George Borrow. When Borrow 
died (26th July 1881), the first obituary notice of him in the AthencBum was 
not by me, but by W. Elwin. This appeared on the Gth August 1881. At 
this time the general public had so forgotten that Borrow was alive that I 
remember once, at one of old Mrs. Procter's receptions, it had been discussed, 
as Lowell and Browning afterwards told me, as to whether I was or was not '' an 
archer of the long bow " because I said that on the previous Sunday I had 
walked with Borrow in Richmond Park, and was frequently seeing him, and 
that on the Sunday before I had walked in the same beautiful park with Dr. 
Gordon Latham, another celebrity of the past " known to be dead. " The fact 
is, Borrow's really great books were Lavengro and The Romany Rye, and the 
latter liad fallen almost dead from the press, smothered by Victorian respecta- 
bility and Philistinism. He was thoroughly soured and angry, and no 
wonder ! He fought shy of literary society. He quite resented being 
introduced to strangers. 

* Elwiu's article was considered very unsatisfactory. Knowing that the 
most competent man in England to write about Borrow was my old friend, 



392 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Mr. Watts-Dunton refers here to Hake's asperities 
when speaking of Borrow. They are very marked in 
the Memoirs of Eighty Years, and nearly all the 
stories of Borrow's eccentricities that have been served 
up to us by Borrow's biographers are due to Hake. 
It is here we read of his snub to Thackeray. ' Have 

Dr. Gordon Hake, I suggested that MacCoU should ask the doctor (one of the 
few men whom Borrow really loved) to furnish the Atltenceum with another 
article. This was agreed to,, and another article was written, either by Dr. 
Hake himself, or by one of his sous — I don't quite remember at this distance 
of time. It appeared in the Athenceum of the 13th August 1881. But even 
this article did not seem to MacColl to vitalise one of the most remarkable 
personalities of the 19th century ; and as I was then a leading writer in the 
literary department of the AthencEum, MacColl asked me to give him an 
article upon Borrow whom I had known so well. I did so, and the article 
" caught on," as MacColl said, more than had any Athenceum article for a long 
time. This appeared 3rd September 1881. When MacColl read the article 
he was so much pleased with it that he urged me to follow it up with an 
article on Borrow in connection with the Children of the Open Air — a subject 
upon which 1 had previously written a good deal in the AthencBum. This 
appeared on the 10th September 1881, and became still more popular, and 
the Athenceum containing it had quite an exceptional sale. 

'The Hake whom you inquire about, Egmont Hake, has drifted out of my 
ken. He at one time lived in Paris, and wrote a book called Paris Originals. 
I know that he did, at one time, contemplate writing upon Borrow, and 
corresponded with Mrs. MacOubrey with this view ; but the aifair fell 
through. As a son of Dr. Hake's he could not fail to know Borrow. He 
wrote a brief article about him, in the Dictionary of National Biography. But 
the two Hakes who were thrown across Borrow most intimately were Thomas 
Hake and George Hake, the latter of whom lately died in Africa. Thomas 
Hake, the eldest of the family, knew Borrow in his own childhood, which 
the other members of the family did not. After Dr. Gordon Hake went to 
live in Germany, after the Roehampton home was broken up, I saw a good 
deal of Borrow. He always thought that no one sympathised with him and 
understood him so thoroughly as I did. — Ever most cordially yours, 

'Theodore Watts-Dunton.' 

Since receiving this letter I have been in communication with Mr. 
Egmont Hake, who generously offered to place his Borrow material at my 
disposal, but this offer came too late to be of service. Mr. Hake will, however, 
shortly publish his Memoirs in which he will include some interesting 
impressions of George Borrow which it has been my privilege to read in 
manuscript. 



FRIENDS OF LATER YEARS 393 

you read my Snob Papers in Punch ? ' Thackeray 
asked him. ' In Punch ? ' Borrow replied. ' It is a 
periodical I never look at.' He was equally rude, 
or shall we say Johnsonian, according to Hake, when 
Miss Agnes Strickland asked him if she might send 
him her Queens of England. He exclaimed, 'for 
God's sake don't, madam ; I should not know where 
to put them or what to do with them.' Hake is 
responsible also for that other story about the woman 
who, desirous of pleasing him, said, ' Oh, Mr. Borrow, 
I have read your books with so much pleasure ! ' On 
which he exclaimed, ' Pray, what books do you mean, 
madam ? Do you mean my account books ? ' ^ Dr. 
Johnson was guilty of many such vagaries, and the 
readers of Bo swell have forgiven him everything be- 
cause they are conveyed to them through the medium 
of a hero- worshipper. Borrow never had a Boswell, 
and despised the literary class so much that he never 
found anything in the shape of an apologist until he 
had been long dead. The most competent of these, 
because writing from personal knowledge, was Walter 
Theodore Watts-Dunton, who is known in literature 
as Theodore Watts, the author of Aylwin and The 
Coining of Love, and the writer of many acute and 
picturesque criticisms. Mr. Watts - Dunton — who 
added his mother's name of Dunton to his own in 
later life — was the son of a solicitor of St. Ives in 
Huntingdonshire. In early life he was himself a 

' Dr. Hake was equally sevei*e in his references to Thackeray, of whom 
scarcely any one has spoken ill. ' Thackeray spent a good deal of his 
time on stilts,' he says. ' . . . He was a very disagreeable companion to 
those who did not want to boast that they knew him.' — Memoirs, p. 86. 
'Thackeray,' he says elsewhere, 'as if under the impression that the party 
was invited to look at him, thought it necessary to make a figure. . . . 
Borrow knew better how to behave in good company.' — Memoirs , p. 166. 



394 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

solicitor, which profession he happily abandoned for 
literature. His friendship with Algernon Charles 
Swinburne is one of the romances of the Victorian 
era. His affectionate solicitude doubtless kept that 
great poet alive for many a year beyond what would 
otherwise have been his lot. Watts-Dunton was, as 
we have seen, introduced to Borrow by Hake. He 
has written a romance which, if he could be persuaded 
to publish it, would doubtless command the same 
attention as Aylwin, in which Borrow is introduced as 
* Dereham ' and Hake as ' Gordon,' and here he tells 
the story of that introduction : 

One day when I was sitting with him in his delightful home, 
near Roehampton, whose windows at the hack looked over 
Richmond Park, and in front over the wildest part of Wimbledon 
Common, one of his sons came in and said that he had seen 
Dereham striding across the common, evidently bound for the 
house. 

' Dereham,' I said, 'is there a man in the world I should so like 
to see as Dereham ? ' 

And then I told Gordon how I had seen him years before 
swimming in the sea off Yarmouth, but had never spoken to him. 

' Why do you want so much to see him ? ' asked Gordon. 

' Well, among other things, I want to see if he is a true Child 
of the Open Air.' ^ 

I find no letter from Hake to Borrow among my 
papers, but three to his wife : 

Bury St. Edmunds, Jan. 27, '48. Evening. 
My dear Mrs. Borrow, — It gave me great pleasure, as it 
always does, to see your handwriting; and as respects the subject 
of your note you may make yourself quite easy, for I believe the 



^ Theodore Watts-Dunton: Poet, Novelist, Critic. By James Douglas. 
Hodder and Stoughton, 1904, p. 96. 



FRIENDS OF LATER YEARS 395 

idea has crossed no other mind than your own. How sorry I am 
to learn that you have been so unwell since your visit to us. I 
hope that by care you will get strong during this bracing weather. 
I wish that you were already nearer to us, and cannot resign the 
hope that we shall yet enjoy the happiness of having you as our 
neighbours. I have felt a strong friendship for Mr. Borrow's mind 
for many years, and have ardently wished from time to time to 
know him, and to have realised my desire I consider one of the most 
happy events of my life. Until lately, dear Mrs. Borrow, I have 
had no opportunity of knowing you and your sweet simple-hearted 
child ; but now I hope nothing will occur to interrupt a regard 
and friendship which I and Mrs. Hake feel most truly towards you 
all. Tell Mr. Borrow how much we should like to be his Sinbad. 
I wish he would bring you all and his papers and come again to look 
about him. There is an old hall at Tostock, which, I hear to-day, is 
quite dry ; if so it is worthy of your attention. It is a mile from 
the Elmswell station, which is ten minutes' time from Bury. This 
liall has got a bad name from having been long vacant, but some 
friends of mine have been over it and they tell me there is not a 
damp spot on the premises. It is seven miles from Bury. Mrs. 
Hake has written about a house at Rougham, but had no answer. 
The cottage at Farnham is to let again. I know not whether 
Mr. Harvey will make an effort for it. A little change would do 
you all good, and we can receive Miss Clarke without any difficulty. 
Give our kindest regards to your party, and believe me, dear Mrs. 
Borrow, sincerely yours, T. G. Hake. 

Bury St. Edmunds, January 19th, '49. 
My dear Mrs. Borrow, — The sight of your handwriting is 
always a luxury — but you say nothing about coming to see us. 
We are pleased to get good accounts of your party, and only wish 
you could report better of yourself. I must take you fairly in 
hand when you come again to the ancient quarters, for such they 
are becoming now from your long absence. You might try 
bismuth and extract of hop, which is often very strengthening to 
tlie stomach. Five grains of extract of hop and five grains of 
trisnitrate of bismuth made into two pills, which are to be taken 
at eleven and repeated at four — daily. I am so pleased to learn 
that Miss Clarke is better, as well as Mr. Borrow. I hope that on 



396 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

some occasion the morphia may be of great comfort to him should 
his night watchings return. It is good news that the proofs are 
advancing — I hope towards a speedy end. Messrs. Oakes and Co.'s 
Bank is as safe as any in the kingdom and more substantial than 
any in this county. It must be safe, for the partners are men of 
large property, and of carefid habits. I am happy to say we 
are all well here, but my brother''s house in town is a scene of sad 
trouble. He is himself laid up with bad scarlet fever as well as 
five children, all severely attacked. One they have lost of this 
fearful complaint. 

Give our kindest regards to Mr. Borrow and accept them 
yourselves. Ever, dear Mrs. Borrow, sincerely yours, 

T. G. Hake. 

I send Beethoven's epitaph for Miss Clarke's album according 
to promise. It is 7iot by Wordsworth. 

Bury St. Edmunds, June 24, '61. 

My dear Mrs. Borrow, — I am very sorry to hear that you are 
not feeling strong, and that these flushes of heat are so frequent 
and troublesome. I will prescribe a medicine for you which I 
hope may prove serviceable. Let me hear again about your health, 
and be assured you cannot possibly give me any trouble. 

I am also glad to hear of Mr. Borrow. I envy him his bath. 
I am looking out anxiously for the new quarterly reviews. I 
wonder whether the Quarterly will contain anything. Is there a 
prospect of vol. iv. ? I really look to passing a day and two half 
days with you, and to bringing Mrs. Hake to your classic soil 
some time in August — if we are not inconveniencing you in your 
charming and snug cottage. I hope Miss Clarke is well. Our 
united kind regards to you all. George is quite brisk and saucy 
— Lucy and the infant have not been well. Mrs. Hake has better 
accounts from Bath. Believe me, dear Mrs. Borrow, very sincerely 
yours, T. G. Hake. 

Mr. Donne was pleased that Mr. Borrow liked his notice in 
Tait. You can take a little cold sherry and water after your 
dinner. 

Mr. A. Egmont Hake, one of Dr. Hake's sons. 



FRIENDS OF LATER YEARS 397 

has also given us an interesting reminiscence of 
Borrow : ^ 

Though he was a friend of my family before he wrote Lavengro^ 
few men have ever made so deep an impression on me as George 
Borrow. His tall, broad figure, his stately bearing, his fine brown 
eyes, so bright yet soft, his thick white hair, his oval, beardless face, 
his loud rich voice, and bold heroic air, were such as to impress the 
most indifferent of lookers-on. Added to this there was something 
not easily forgotten in the manner in which he would unex- 
pectedly come to our gates, singing some gipsy song, and as suddenly 
depart. His conversation, too, was unlike that of any other man ; 
whether he told a long story or only commented on some ordinary 
topic, he was always quaint, often humorous ... It was at 
Oulton that the author of The Bible in Spain spent his happiest 
days. The menage in his Suffolk home was conducted with great 
simplicity, but he always had for his friends a bottle or two of 
wine of rare vintage, and no man was more hearty than he over 
the glass. He passed his mornings in his summer-house, writing 
on small scraps of paper, and these he handed to his wife who 
copied them on foolscap. It was in this way and in this retreat 
that the manuscript of Lavengro as well as of The Bible in Spain 
was prepared, the place of which he says, ' I hastened to my 
summer-house by the side of the lake and there I thought and 
wrote, and every day I repaired to the same place and thought 
and wrote until I had finished The Bible in Spain.'' In this outdoor 
studio, hung behind the door, were a soldier's coat and a sword 
which belonged to his father ; these were household gods on 
which he would often gaze while composing. 

To Mr. Watts -Dunton we owe by far the best 
description of Borrow's personal appearance : 

What Borrow lacked in adaptability was in great degree com- 
pensated by his personal appearance. No one who has ever 
walked with him, either through the streets of London or along 

^ ' Recollections of George Borrow,' by A. Egmont Hake in The AthencBum, 
Aug. 13, 1881. 



898 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

the country roads, could fail to remark how his appearance 
arrested the attention of the passers-by. As a gypsy woman once 
remarked to the present writer, ' Everybody as ever see'd the 
white-headed Romany Rye never forgot him,"* When he chanced 
to meet troops marching along a country road, it was noticeable 
that every soldier, whether on foot or horseback, would involun- 
tarily turn to look at Borrow's striking figure. He stood con- 
siderably above six feet in height, was built as perfectly as a 
Greek statue, and his practice of athletic exercises gave his every 
movement the easy elasticity of an athlete under training. Those 
East Anfflians who have bathed with him on the east coast, or 
others who have done the same in the Thames or the Ouse, can 
vouch for his having been an almost faultless model of masculine 
symmetry, even as an old man. With regard to his countenance, 
' noble ' is the only word which can be used to describe it. When 
he was quite a young man his thick crop of hair had become of a 
silvery whiteness.^ There was a striking relation between the 
complexion, which was as luminous and sometimes rosy as an 
English girl's, and the features — almost perfect Roman-Greek in 
type, with a dash of Hebrew. To the dark lustre of the eyes an 
increased intensity was lent by the fair skin. No doubt, however, 
what most struck the observer was the marked individuality, not 
to say singularity, of his expression. If it were possible to 
describe this expression in a word or two, it might, perhaps, be 
called a self-consciousness that was both proud and shy.^ 

Here is another picture by Mr. Watts-Dunton of 
this London period : ^ 

At seventy years of age, after breakfasting at eight o''clock in 
Hereford Square, he would walk to Putney, meet one or more of 
us at Roehamptom, roam about Wimbledon and Richmond Park 
with us, bathe in the Fen Ponds with a north-east wind cutting 
across the icy water like a razor, run about the grass afterwards, 

' Borrow's hair was black until he was about twenty years of age, when it 
turned white. 

2 Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature, vol. iii. p. 430. 
2 The Athenoium, September 3, 1881. 



FRIENDS OF LATER YEARS 399 

like a boy to shake off some of the water-drops, stride about the 
park for hours, and then, after fasting for twelve hours, eat a 
dinner at Roehampton that would have done Sir Walter Scott's 
eyes good to see. Finally, he would walk back to Hereford 
Square, getting home late at night. And if the physique of the 
man was bracing, his conversation, unless he liappened to be 
suffering from one of his occasional fits of depression, was still 
more so. Its freshness, raciness, and eccentric whim no pen could 
describe. There is a kind of humour, the delight of which is 
that while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite as 
much to think that there is a mind so whimsical, crotchety, and 
odd as to draw them. This was the humour of Borrow. 

And there is yet another description, equally illumin- 
ating, in which Mr. Watts-Dunton records how he won 
Borrow's heart by showing a familiarity with Douglas 
Jerrold's melodrama Ambrose Gwinett : 

From that time I used to see Borrow often at Roehampton, 
sometimes at Putney, and sometimes, but not often, in London. 
I could have seen much more of him than I did had not the 
whirlpool of London, into which I plunged for a time, borne me 
away from this most original of men ; and this is what I so greatly 
lament now : for of Borrow it may be said, as it was said of a 
greater man still, that ' after Nature made him she forthwith 
broke the mould.' The last time I ever saw him was shortly 
before he left London to live in the country. It was, I remember 
well, on Waterloo Bridge, where I had stopped to gaze at a sun- 
set of singular and striking splendour, whose gorgeous clouds and 
ruddy mists were reeling and boiling over the West-End. 
Borrow came up and stood leaning over the parapet, entranced by 
the sight, as well he might be. Like most people born in flat 
districts, he had a passion for sunsets. Turner could not have 
painted that one, I think, and certainly my pen could not describe 
it ; for the London smoke was flushed by the sinking sun, and had 
lost its dunness, and, reddening every moment as it rose above the 
roofs, steeples, and towers, it went curling round the sinking sun 
in a rosy vapour, leaving, however, just a segment of a golden 
rim, which gleamed as dazzlingly as in the thinnest and clearest 



400 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

air — a peculiar effect which struck Borrow deeply. I never saw 
such a sunset before or since, not even on Waterloo Bridge ; and 
from its association with ' the last of Borrow ' I shall never 
forget it.^ 

Mr. Watts- Dunton concludes his reminiscences — 
the most valuable personal record that we have of 
Borrow — with a sonnet that now has its place in 
literature : 

We talked of ' Children of the Open Air' 
Who once in Orient valleys lived aloof, 
Loving the sun, the wind, the sweet reproof 

Of storms, and all that makes the fair earth fair, 

Till, on a day, across the mystic bar 

Of moonrise, came the ' Children of the Roof,' 
Who find no balm 'neath Evening's rosiest woof, 

Nor dews of peace beneath the Morning Star. 

We looked o'er London where men wither and choke, 
Roofed in, poor souls, renouncing stars and skies. 
And lore of woods and wild wind-prophecies — 

Yea, every voice that to their fathers spoke : 

And sweet it seemed to die ere bricks and smoke 
Leave never a meadow outside Paradise. 



1 The Athenaum, September 10, 1881. I am indebted to my friend Mr. 
John Collins Francis, of The AthencBum newspaper, for generously placing 
the columns of that journal at my disposal for the purposes of this book. 



CHAPTER XXXV 

BORROWS UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS 

To many in our day, less utilitarian than those of 
an earlier era, Borrow must have been an interesting 
man of letters had he not written his four great books. 
Single-minded devotion to the less commercially re- 
munerative languages has now become respectable 
and even estimable. Students of the Scandinavian 
languages, and of the Celtic, abound in our midst. 
Borrow was a forerunner with Bowring of much of 
this ' useless ' learning. Borrow came to consider Bow- 
ring's apparent neglect of him to be unforgivable. 
But that time had not arrived, when in 1842 he wrote 
to him as follows : 



To Dr. John Bowring 

OuLTON, LowESTOFTj SuFFOLK, July 14t/l, 1842. 
Dear dear Sir, — Pray excuse my troubling you with a line. I 
wish you would send as many of the papers and manuscripts, 
which I left at yours some twelve years ago, as you can find. 
Amongst others there is an essay on Welsh poetry, a translation of 
the Death of Balder, etc. If I am spared to the beginning of 
next year, I intend to bring out a volume called Songs of 
Denmark, consisting of some selections from the Kcempe Viser and 
specimens from Ewald, Grundtvig, Oehlenschlager, and I suppose 
I must give a few notices of those people. Have you any history of 

2 c ^01 



402 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Danish literature from which I could glean a few hints. I think 
you have a book in two volumes containing specimens of Danish 
poetry. It would be useful to me as I want to translate Ingemann"'s 
Dannehrog, and one or two other pieces. I shall preface all with 
an essay on the Danish language. It is possible that a book of 
this description may take, as Denmark is quite an untrodden 
field. 

Could you lend me for a short time a Polish and French or 
Polish and German dictionary. I am going carefully through 
Makiewitz, about whom I intend to write an article. 

The Bible in Spain is in the press, and with God's permission 
will appear about November in three volumes. I shall tell 
Murray to send a copy to my oldest, I may say my only friend. 
Pray let me know how you are getting on. I every now and then 
see your name in the Examiner^ the only paper I read. Should 
you send the papers and the books it must be by the Yarmouth 
coach which starts from Fetter Lane. Address : George Borrow, 
Crown Inn, Lowestoft, Suffolk. With kindest remembrances to 
Mrs. Bowring, Miss Bowring, and family — I remain. Dear Sir, 
ever yours, George Borrow. 

Now with the achieved success of The Bible in 
Spain and the leisure of a happy home Borrow could 
for the moment think of the ambition of ' twelve years 
ago ' — an ambition to put before the public some of 
the results of his marvellous industry. The labours of 
the dark, black years between 1825 and 1830 might now 
perchance see the light. Three such books got them- 
selves published, as we have seen, Romantic Ballads, 
Tar gum, and The Talisman. The Sleeping Bard had 
been translated and offered to 'a little Welsh book- 
seller' of Smithfield in 1830, who, however, said, when 
he had read it, 'were I to print it I should be ruined.' 
That fate followed the book to the end, and Borrow was 
premature when he said in his Preface to The Sleeping 
Bard that such folly is on the decline, because he 
found ' Albemarle Street in '60 willing to publish a 



BORROWS UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS 403 



C 



I!' 



-tift. m\ runt 1 ml m/i-. 



Ix^iiilt m . 



WHdi 






I 






FACSIMILE OF A POEM FROM TARGUM 
A Translation from the French by George Borrow 



404 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

harmless but plain-speaking book which Smithfield 
shrank from in '30.' At the last moment John 
Murray refused to publish, but seems to have agreed 
to give his imprint to the title-page. Borrow pub- 
lished the book at his own expense, it being set up by 
James Matthew Denew, of 72 Hall Plain, Great 
Yarmouth. Fourteen years later — in 1 874 — Mr. Murray 
made some amends by publishing Roiiiano Lavo-Lil, 
in which are many fine translations from the Romany, 
and that, during his lifetime, was the ' beginning and 
the end ' of Borrow's essays in publishing so far as his 
translations were concerned. Webber, the bookseller 
of Ipswich, did indeed issue The Turkish Jester — 
advertised as ready for publication in 1857 — in 
1884, and Jarrold of Norwich The Death of Balder in 
1889 ; but enthusiasts have asked in vain for Celtic 
Bards, Chiefs and Kings,- Songs of Europe, and 
Northern Skalds, Kings and Earls. It is not 
recorded whether Borrow offered these to any 
publisher other than * Glorious John ' of Albemarle 
Street, but certain it is that Mr. Murray would have 
none of them. The ' mountains of manuscript ' 
remained to be the sorrowful interest of Borrow as an 
old man as they had — many of them— been the 
sorrow and despair of his early manhood. Here is a 
memorandum in his daughter's handwriting of the 
work that Borrow was engaged upon at the time of 
his death : 

Songs of Ireland. Songs of Iceland. 

Songs of the Isle of Man. Songs of Sweden. 

Songs of Wales. Songs of Germany. 

Songs of the Gaelic Highlands. Songs of Holland. 

Songs of Anglo-Saxon England. Songs of Ancient Greece. 

Songs of the North, Mythological. Songs of the Modern Greeks. 

Songs of the North, Heroic. Songs of the Klephts. 



BORROWS UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS 405 

Songs of Denmark, Early Period. Songs of Ancient Rome. 

Songs of Denmark^ Modern Period. Songs of the Church. 

Songs of the Feroe Isles. Songs of the Troubadours. 

Songs of the Gascons. Songs of Normandy. 

Songs of Modern Italy. Songs of Spain. 

Songs of Portugal. Songs of Russia. 

Songs of Poland. Songs of the Basques. 

Songs of Hungary. Songs of Finland. 
Songs and Legends of Turkey. 

These translations were intended to form a volume with 
copious notes, but were only completed a month before Mr. 
Borrow's death, which occurred at his residence, Oulton Cottage, 
Suffolk, July 26th, 1881, in the seventy-ninth year of his age. 
This grand old man, full of years and honour, was buried beside 
his wife (who had proved a noble helpmate to him), in Brompton 
Cemetery, August 4th. 

And so what many will consider Borrow's * craze ' 
for verse translations remained with him to the end. 
We know with what equanimity he bore his defeat 
in early years. Did he not make humorous ' copy ' 
out of it in Laveiigro. It must have been a greater 
disappointment that his publisher would have none of 
his wares when he had proved by writing The Bible 
in Spain that at least some of his work had money in it. 
For years it was Borrow's opinion that Lockhart stood 
in his way, wishing to hold the field with his Ancient 
Spanish Ballads (1821), and maintaining that Borrow 
was no poet. The view that Borrow had no poetry in 
him and that his verse is always poor has been held 
by many of Borrow's admirers. The view will not 
have the support of those who have had the advantage 
of reading all Borrow's less known published writings, 
and the many manuscripts that he left behind him. 
But on the general question let us hear Mr. Theodore 
Watts-Dunton : — 



406 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

It should never be forgotten that Borrow was, before every- 
thing else, a poet. . . . By poet I do not mean merely a man who 
is skilled in writing lyrics and sonnets and that kind of thing, 
but primarily a man who has the poetic gift of seeing through 
* the show of things,"* and knowing where he is — the gift of 
drinking deeply of the waters of life, and of feeling grateful to 
Nature for so sweet a draught.' ^ 

Possibly Mr. Watts-Dunton did not contemplate 
his idea being applied to Borrow's verse translations, 
but all the same the quality of poetic imagination 
may be found here in abundance. The little Welsh 
bookseller of Smithfield said to Borrow in reference 
to The Sleeping Bard : 

Were I to print it I should be ruined ; the terrible description 
of vice and torment would frighten the genteel part of the 
English public out of its wits, and I should to a certainty be 
prosecuted by Sir James Scarlett. I am much obliged to you 
for the trouble you have given yourself on my account — but, 
Myn Diawl ! I had no idea, till I had read him in English, 
that Elis Wyn had been such a terrible fellow. 

And here the little Welsh bookseller paid Borrow 
a signal compliment. In the main Borrow provided a 
prose translation of The Sleeping Bard. In Targum^ 
however, he showed himself a quite gifted balladist, 
far removed from the literary standard of Romantic 
Ballads ten years earlier. Space does not permit of 
any quotation in this chapter, and I must be content 
here to declare that the spirit of poetry came over 
Borrow on many occasions. The whole of Borrow's 
Songs of Scandinavia will ultimately be published, 
although for eighty and more years ^ the pile of neatly 

^ The Athenceum, September 3, 1881. 

2 In the Monthly Magazine for March 1830 under the head of ' Miscellan- 
eous Intelligence' we find the following announcement : — 

' Dr. Bowring and Mr. George Borrow are about to publish The Songs of 



BORROWS UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS 407 

written manuscript of that book, which is now in my 
possession, has appealed for publication in vain. There 
will be found, in such a ballad as Orvi Ungerswayne, 
for example, a practical demonstration that Borrow 
had the root of the matter in him. It is true that 
Borrows limited acquaintance with English poetry 
was a serious drawback to great achievement, and 
his many translations from his favourite Welsh bard 
Goronwy Owen that are before me are too much 
under the influence of Pope. In addition to the 
Songs of Scandinavia I have before me certain other 
ballads in manuscript — such portions of his various 
unpublished but frequently advertised works as did 
not fall to Dr. Knapp.^ Of these I do not hesitate to 
say that whatever the difference of opinion as to their 
poetic quality there can be no difference of opinion as to 
their being well-told stories of an exceedingly interest- 
ing and invigorating character. But I must leave for 
another time and another opportunity any discussion 
of Borrow's poetic achievement of which at present the 
world has had little opportunity of knowing anything.^ 
Of prose manuscript there is also a considerable quantity, 
including diaries of travel and translations of nine or 
ten stories from various languages. Of the minor books 
already published we have already spoken of Faustus, 
Romantic Ballads, Taigiim, and The Talisman, and 
Borrow's last and least interesting book Romano Lavo- 
Lil. There remains but to recall : — 



Scandinavia, containing a selection of the most interesting of the Historical 
and Romantic Ballads of North- Western Europe, with specimens of the 
Danish and Norwegian Poets down to the present day.' 

1 Dr. Knapp's Borrow manuscripts are now in the Hispanic Society's 
Archives in New York. 

2 I contemplate at a later date an edition of Borrow's Collected Writings, 
in which the unpublished verse will extend to two volumes. 



408 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

The Sleeping Bard, published by John Murray, 1860 
The Turkish Jester, „ W. Webber, 1884. 

The Death of Balder, „ Jarrold and Sons, 1889 

These eight little volumes will always remain Bor- 
row's least-read books. Only in Targum and The 
Sleeping Bard do we find much indication of those 
qualities which made him famous. It is not in the 
least surprising that the other work failed to find a 
publisher, and, indeed, from a merely commercial point 
of view, the late John Murray had more excuse for 
refusing Romano Lavo-Lil, which he did publish, than 
The Sleeping Bard, which he refused to publish — 
at least on his own responsibility. Such books, what- 
ever their merits, are issued to-day only by learned 
societies. In a quite different category were those 
many ballads^ from diverse languages that Borrow had 
hoped to issue under such titles as Celtic Bards, Chiefs 
and Kings, and Northern Skalds, Kings and Earls. 
These books would have had no difficulty in finding a 
publisher to-day were they offered by a writer of one 
half the popularity of Borrow.^ 

There is, I repeat, excellent work in these ballads. 
As to Targum let it not be forgotten that Hasfeld — 
really a good judge— said in The Athenceum that 'the 
work is a pearl of genius,' and that William Bodham 
Donne declared that ' the language and rhythm are vastly 
superior to Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome.' As to 
The Sleeping Bard Borrow himself was able to make 
his own vigorous defence of that work. In emulation 

1 Certain of these have of late been privately printed in pamphlet form — 
limited to thirty copies each. 

2 The works of Dr. George Sigerson, Dr. Douglas Hyde and Dr. Kuno 
Meyer in Irish Literature are an evidence of this. Dr. Sigerson's Bards of 
the Gael and Gaul and Dr. Hyde's Love Songs of Connaught have each gone 
through more than one edition and have proved remunerative to their authors. 



BORROWS UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS 409 

of Walter Scott he reviewed himself in Jlie Quarterly} 















(^(1 /."A in/.o /,•'« 



^fiwid aw iH^M limf m m . , , 



|vi'i!friM,. fVojQ O^oo^ 'Jj^'^ ^o'mG [ctao A"|i Jh^w (>;f. 



BORROAV AS A PROFESSOR OF LANGUAGES 
An ' Advertisement ' put forth by Borrow in Norwich during the years of 
struggle before he was sent to Russia by the Bible Society. This interesting 
document, which is in Borrow's handwriting, is in the possession of Mr. Frank 
J. Farrell of Great Yarmouth, by whose courtesy it is reproduced here. 

His article is really an essay on Welsh poetry, and in- 
cidentally he quotes from his unpublished Celtic Bards, 
Chiefs and Kings a lengthy passage, the manuscript of 

^ The Quarterly Review, January 1861, pp. 38-63. 



410 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

which is in my possession. We are introduced again 
to all Borrows old friends of Wild Wales : Hew 
Morris, Goronwy Owen, and finally Elis Wyn. 
Borrow quotes from The Romany Rye, but as becomes 
a reviewer of his own book, gives no praise to his 
achievement. 

I find no plays among Borrow's ' mountains of 
manuscript' in my possession, and so I am not dis- 
posed to accept the suggestion that the following 
letter from GifFord to Borrow refers to a play which 
Borrow pretended to be the work of a friend while it 
was really his own. If it was his own he doubtless 
took GifFord's counsel to heart and promptly destroyed 
the manuscript :— 

To George Borrow, Esq. 

A Specimen of Giffbrd^s criti- 
cism on a friend's play, which I 
was desired to send to him. 

My dear Borrow, — I have read your M.S. very attentively, 
and may say of it with Desdemona of the song — 

' It is silly, sooth, 
And dallies with the innocence of love 
Like to old age.' 

The poetry in some places is pretty, the sentiment is also excel- 
lent. And can I say more ? The plot is petty, the characters 
without vigour, and the story poorly told. Instead of Irene the 
scene seems to be laid in Arcadia, and the manners are not so 
much confounded as totally lost. There are Druids — but such 
Druids ! O Lord ! 

There is to be seen no physical, perhaps no moral lesson, 
though a Druid should not be a rogue — but it is not so set down 
in the bond. Is this the characterisation which we have been 
used to see there ? To end an unpleasant letter, I must leave to 



BORROWS UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS 411 

your friendship for the author to contrive some mode of dis- 
suading him from publishing. If, however, he is determined to 
rush on the world, let him do it, in the first place, anonymously. 



' Itl .>,^ Mima mi \\iih<ni utto , 



to mi *iw\ia ... 



A PAGE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF BORROWS SONGS OF 
SCANDINAVIA— AIJ UNPUBLISHED WORK 

If it takes, he may then toss up his nose at my opinion, and claim 
his work. 

Say nothing of me, for I would not be thought to offend so 
excellent and so able a man. He may be content with his literary 
fame, and can do without poetic praise. 



412 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

Your answer is short. The play might have passed very well 
had it been published when written, and when the writer was yet 
young and little known, but it will be hazardous now, as the 
world is cross-grained, and will not see your master in the grave 
and learned author of so many valuable works; but judge him 
from his present attainments. But this, as Mrs. Quickly says, ' is 
alligant terms,"* and it may do. — Ever yours, Wm. Gifford. 

P.S. — I see the preface is already written, and do what you 
will, the play will be published. 

One other phase of this more limited aspect of Bor- 
row's work may be dealt with here — his mastery of 
languages. I have before me scores of pages which 
reveal the way that Borrow became a lav-engro 
— a word-master. He drew up tables of every lan- 
guage in turn, the English word following the German, 
or Welsh, or whatever the tongue might be, and he 
learnt these off with amazing celerity. His wonderful 
memory was his greatest asset in this particular. He 
was not a philologist if we accept the dictionary defini- 
tion of that word as ' a person versed in the science of 
language.' But his interest in languages is refreshing 
and interesting — never pedantic, and he takes rank 
among those disinterested lovers of learning who 
pursue their researches without any regard to the 
honours or emoluments that they may bring, loving 
learning for learning's sake, undaunted by the dis- 
couragements that come from the indifference of a 
world to which they have made their appeal in vain. 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

HENRIETTA CLARKE 

Borrow never had a child, but happy for him was the 
part played by his stepdaughter Henrietta in his life. 
She was twenty-three years old when her mother 
married him, and it is clear to me that she was from 
the beginning of their friendship and even to the 
end of his life devoted to her stepfather. Readers 
of Wild Wales will recall not only the tribute that 
Borrow pays to her, which we have already quoted, in 
which he refers to her ' good qualities and many accom- 
plishments,' but the other pleasant references in that 
book. ' Henrietta,' he says in one passage, * played on 
the guitar ^ and sang a Spanish song, to the great delight 
of John Jones.' When climbing Snowdon he is keen 
in his praises of the endurance of ' the gallant girl.' As 
against all this, there is an undercurrent of depreciation 
of his stepdaughter among Borrow's biographers. The 
picture of Borrow's home in later life at Oulton is 
presented by them with sordid details. The Oulton 
tradition which still survives among the few inhabitants 
who lived near the Broad at Borrow's death in 1881, 
and still reside there, is of an ill-kept home, supremely 
untidy, and it is as a final indictment of his daughter's 

^ Henrietta's guitar is now in my possession and is a very handsome 
instrument. 

413 



414 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

callousness that we have the following gruesome 
picture by Dr. Knapp : 

On the 26th of July 1881 Mr. Borrow was found dead in his 
house at Oulton. The circumstances were these. His step- 
daughter and her husband drove to Lowestoft in the morning on 
some business of their own, leaving Mr. Borrow without a living 
soul in the house with him. He had earnestly requested them not to 
go away because he felt that he was in a dying state; but the response 
intimated that he had often expressed the same feeling before, and 
his fears had proved groundless. During the interval of these few 
hours of abandonment nothing can palliate or excuse, George 
Borrow died as he had lived — alone! His age was seventy-eight 
years and twenty-one days. 

Dr. Knapp no doubt believed all this ; Mt is endorsed 
by the village gossip of the past thirty years, and the 
mythical tragedy is even heightened by a further story 
of a farm tumbril which carried poor Borrow's body to 
the railway station when it was being conveyed to 
London to be buried beside his wife in Brompton 
Cemetery. 

The tumbril story — whether correct or otherwise — 
is a matter of indifference to me. The legend of the 
neglect of Borrow in his last moments is however of 
importance, and the charge can easily be disproved.^ 
I have before me Mrs. MacOubrey's diary for 1881. 

* Henrietta MacOubrey put every difficulty in the way of Dr. Knapp, and 
I hold many letters from her strongly denouncing his Life. 

2 The stories against Henrietta MacOubrey have received endorsement 
from that pleasant writer Mr. W. A. Dutt, who has long lived near Lowes- 
toft. It is conveyed in such a communication as the following from a 
correspondent : ' After Borrow's death Mr. Reeve, Curator of Norwich 
Castle Museum, visited the Oulton house with the Rev. J. Gunn (died 28th 
May 1890), having some idea of buying Borrow's books for the Colman 
collection. Mrs. MacOubrey wanted £1000 for them, but Mr. Reeve did not 
think them worth more than £200. They were, however, bought by Webber 
of Ipswich, who soon afterwards entered into the employment of Jarrold of 
Norwich. Mr. Reeve described the scene as one of rank dilapidation and 
decay — evidences of extreme untidiness and neglect everywhere.' 



HENRIETTA CLARKE 415 

I have many such diaries for a long period of years, 

but this for 1881 is of particular moment. Here, 

under the date July 26th, we find the brief note, 

George Borrow died at three o'clock this viorning. It 

is scarcely possible that Borrow's stepdaughter and her 

husband could have left him alone at three o'clock in 

the morning in order to drive into Lowestoft, less than 

two miles distant. At this time, be it remembered, 

Dr. MacOubrey was eighty-one years of age. Now, 

as to the general untidiness of Borrow's home at the 

time of his death — the point is a distasteful one, but it 

had better be faced. Henrietta was twenty-three years 

of age when her mother married Borrow. She was 

sixty-four at the time of his death, and her husband, as 

I have said, was eighty-one years of age at that time, 

being three years older than Borrow. Here we have 

three very elderly people keeping house together and 

little accustomed overmuch to the assistance of 

domestic servants. The situation at once becomes clear. 

Mrs. Borrow had a genius for housekeeping and for 

management. She watched over her husband, kept 

his accounts, held the family purse,^ managed all his 

affairs. She ' managed ' her daughter also, delighting 

in that daughter's accomplishments of drawing and 

botany, to which may be added a zeal for the writing of 

stories which does not seem, judging from the many 

manuscripts in her handwriting that I have burnt, to 

have received much editorial encouragement. In short, 

Henrietta was not domesticated. But just as I have 

' Mr. Herbert Jenkins has drawn a quite wrong conclusion — although 
natural under the circumstances — from a letter he had seen in which Borrow 
asked his wife for money. Mrs. Borrow kept the banking account. Moreover, 
it is not generally known that Borrow completed the possession of his wife's 
estate, including Oulton Hall farm and some cottage property, with the 
money that came to him from The Bible in Spain. 



416 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

proved in preceding chapters that Borrow was happy in 
his married life, so I would urge that as far as a some- 
what disappointed career would permit to the sadly 
bereaved author he was happy in his family circle to the 
end. It was at his initiative that, when he had returned 
to Oulton after the death of his wife, his daughter 
and her husband came to live with him. He declared 
that to live alone was no longer tolerable, and they 
gave up their own home in London to join him at 
Oulton. 

A new glimpse of Borrow on his domestic side has 
been offered to the public even as this book is passing 
through the press. Mr. S. H. Baldrey, a Norwich 
solicitor, has given his reminiscences of the author of 
Lavengro to the leading newspaper of that city.^ 
Mr. Baldrey is the stepson of the late John Pilgrim 
of the firm of Jay and Pilgrim, who were Borrow's 
solicitors at Norwich in the later years of his life. One 
at least of Mr. Baldrey 's many reminiscences has in it 
an element of romance ; that in which he recalls Mrs. 
Borrow and her daughter : 

Mrs. Borrow always struck me as a dear old creature. When 
Borrow married her she was a widow with one daughter, Henrietta 
Clarke, The old lady used to dress in black silk. She had little 
silver-grey corkscrew curls down the side of her face; and she wore a 
lace cap with a mauve ribbon on top, quite in the Early Victorian 
style. I remember that on one occasion when she and Miss Clarke 
had come to Brunswick House they were talking with my mother 
in the temporary absence of George Borrow, who, so far as I can 
recall, had gone into another room to discuss business with John 
Pilgrim. 

' Ah ! ' she said, ' George is a good man, but he is a strange 
creature. Do you know he will say to me after breakfast, " Mary, 

^ 'George Borrow Reminiscences' in The Eastern Daily Press, July 31, 
1913. 



HENRIETTA CLARKE 417 

I am going for a walk,"" and then I do not see anything more of 
him for three months. And all the time he will be walking miles 
and miles. Once he went right into Scotland, and never once slept 
in a house. He took not even a handbag with him or a clean shirt, 
but lived just like any old tramp.' 

Mr. Baldrey is clearly in error here, or shall we say 
that Mrs. Borrow humorously exaggerated ? We have 
seen that Borrow's annual holiday was a matter of 
careful arrangement, and his knapsack or satchel is fre- 
quently referred to in his descriptions of his various 
tours. But the matter is of little importance, and Mr. 
Baldrey's pictures of Borrow are excellent, including 
that of his personal appearance : 

As I recall him, he was a fine, powerfully built man of about 
six feet high. He had a clean-shaven face with a fresh complexion, 
almost approaching to the florid, and never a wrinkle, even at 
sixty, except at the corners of his dark and rather prominent eyes. 
He had a shock of silvery white hair. He always wore a very badly 
brushed silk hat, a black frock coat and trousers, the coat all 
buttoned down before ; low shoes and white socks, with a couple 
of inches of white showing between the shoes and the trousers. 
He was a tireless walker, with extraordinary powers of endurance, 
and was also very handy with his fists, as in those days a gentleman 
required to be, more than he does now. 

Mr. John Pilgrim lived at Brunswick House, on 
the Newmarket Road, Norwich, and here Borrow 
frequently visited him. Mr. Baldrey recalls one par- 
ticular visit : 

I have a curious recollection of his dining one night at Bruns- 
wick House, John Pilgrim, who was a careful, abstemious man, 
never took more than two glasses of port at dinner. ' John,' said 
Borrow, ' this is a good port. I prefer Burgundy if you can get it 
good ; but, lord, you cannot get it now.' It so happened that 
Mr. Pilgrim had some fine old Clos-Vougeot in the cellar. ' I 

2d 



418 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

think,' said he, ' I can give you a good drop of Burgundy." 
A bottle was sent for, and Borrow finished it, alone and unaided. 
' Well,' he remarked, ' I think this is a good Burgundy. But I 'm 



(v^iviaa^ V(«hJ H/^ ^ ^^ j^ L Li iu ii 



A LETTER FROM BORROW TO HIS WIFE WRITTEN FROM ROME 
IN HIS CONTINENTAL JOURNEY OF 1844 

not quite certain. I should like to try a little more.' Another 
bottle was called up, and the guest finished it to the last drop. 
I am still,' he said, ' not quite sure about it, but I shall know in 
the morning.' The next morning Mr. Pilgrim and I were leaving 
for the office, when Boitow came up the garden path waving his 



HENRIETTA CLARKE 419 

arms like a windmill. ' Oh, John,' he said, ' that xvas Burgundy ! 
When I woke up this morning it was coursing through my veins 
like fire."" And yet Borrow was not a man to drink to excess. I 
cannot imagine him being the worse for liquor. He had wonder- 
ful health and digestion. Neither a gourmand nor a gourmet, 
he could take down anything, and be none the worse for it. I 
don't think you could have made him drunk if you tried. 

And here is a glimpse of Borrow after his wife's 
death, for which Ave are grateful to Mr. Baldrey : 

After the funeral of Mrs. Borrow he came to Norwich and 
took me over to Oulton with him. He was silent all the way. 
When we got to the little white wicket gate before the approach 
to the house he took off his hat and began to beat his breast like 
an Oriental. He cried aloud all the way up the path. He 
calmed himself, however, by the time that Mr. Crabbe had 
opened the door and asked us in. Crabbe brought in some wine, 
and we all sat down to table. I sat opposite to Mrs. Crabbe ; 
her husband was on my left hand. Borrow sat at one end of the 
table, and the chair at the opposite end was left vacant. We 
were talking in a casual way when Borrow, pointing to the empty 
chair, said with profound emotion, ' There ! It was there that I 
first saw her.' It was a curious coincidence that though there were 
four of us we should have left that particular seat unoccupied at 
a little table of about four feet square.^ 



* Mr. Baldrey also gives us reminiscences of Sorrow's prowess as a 
swimmer : 

'It was one of the signs of his perfect health and vigour that he was a 
fine swimmer. On one occasion George Jay and John Pilgrim were out for 
a sail in Jay's old yacht, the Widgeon. Becalmed^ they were drifting some- 
where down by Reedham, when suddenly Borrow said, "George, how deep 
is it here?" " About twenty-two feet, sir," said George Jay. The partners 
always called him "sir." "George," said Borrow, "I am going to the 
bottom." Straightway he stripped, dived, and presently came up with a 
handful of mud and weeds. " There, George," he said, "\'\& been to the 
bottom." Some time in 1872 or 1873, for Borrow was then sixty-nine, my 
mother and I were walking on the beach at Lowestoft, when just round 
the Ness Light we met Borrow coming towards us from the Gorton side. 
He got hold of my shoulder, and, pointing to the big black buoy beyond 



420 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

But this is a lengthy digression from the story of 
Henrietta Clarke, who married William MacOubrey, 
an Irishman — and an Orangeman — from Belfast in 
1865. The pair lived first in Belfast and afterwards 
at 80 Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square. Before his 
marriage he had practised at 134 Sloane Street, London. 
MacOubrey, although there has been some doubt cast 
upon the statement, was a Doctor of Medicine of Trinity 
College, Dublin, and a Barrister-at-Law. Within his 
limitations he was an accomplished man, and before me 
lie not only documentary evidence of his M.D. and 
his legal status, but several printed pamphlets that bear 

the Ness, he said, "There ! Do you see that? I have just been out there. 
I have not been back many minutes." At the age of nearly seventy he had 
been round the Ness Buoy and home again — a wonderful performance if, in 
addition to his age, you remember the dangerous set of the currents there- 
abouts.' 

There is also a story, which comes to me from another quarter, of Borrow 
skating upon the ice of Oulton Broad a few months before his death, and 
remarking that he had not skated since he was in Russia. The following 
passage from Mr. Baldrey's narrative is interesting as showing that Borrow 
did not in later life quite lose sight of his birthplace : 

' Apparently I interested him in some way, for twice while I was at 
school at East Dereham he came over specially to take me out for the 
afternoon. He had ascertained from my mother which were the school 
half-holidays, and purposely chose those days so that I might be free. We 
would start off at half-past twelve and return at bedtime. Where we went 
I could not tell you lor certain, but I know that once we went through 
Scarning and once through Mattishall. What we talked about of course I 
cannot recall, for I was then a boy between 18 and 15 years of age, and I 
had no sort of inkling that my companion was even then a celebrity and 
destined to be a still greater one in the future. But I do remember that 
sometimes I could not get a word out of him for an hour or more, and that 
then suddenly he would break out with all sorts of questions. " I wonder if 
you can see what I can," he once remarked. " Do you see that the gypsies 
have been here ? " " No," I replied. " And you are not likely to," said he. 
And^then he^would tell me no more. He was rather prone to arouse one's 
curiosity and refuse to pursue the subject. I do not mean that he was 
morose. Far from it. He was always very kind to me. After I had left 
school and returned to Norwich he frequently called for me and took me out 
with him. Once or twice I went with him to Lowestoft.' 



HENRIETTA CLARKE 421 

his name/ What is of more importance, the many 
letters from and to his wife that have passed through 
my hands and have been consigned to the flames prove 
that husband and wife Uved on most affectionate 
terms. 

It is natural that Borrow 's correspondence with his 
stepdaughter should have been of a somewhat private 
character, and I therefore publish only a selection from 
his letters to her, believing however that they will 
modify an existing tradition very considerably : 



To Mrs. JMacOubrey 

Dear Henrietta, — Have you heard from the gentleman whom 
you said you would write to about the farm ? - Mr. C. came over 
the other day and I mentioned the matter to him, but he told me 
that he was on the eve of going to London on law business and 
should be absent for some time. His son is in Cambridge. I am 
afraid that it will be no easy matter to find a desirable tenant and 
that none are likely to apply but a set of needy speculators ; 
indeed, there is a general dearth of money. How is Dr. M. ? God 
bless you ! George Borrow. 



To Mrs. MacOubrey 

Dear Henrietta, — I have received some of the rent and send 
a cheque for eight pounds. Have the kindness to acknowledge the 
receipt of same by return of post. As soon as you arrive in 
London, let me know, and I will send a cheque for ten pounds. 



^ One of them is entitled The Present Crisis : The True Cause of Our 
Indian Troubles, by William MacOubrey of the Middle Temple. There are 
also countless pamphlets in manuscript. MacOubrey was an enthusiastic 
and indeed truculent upholder of the Act of Union. 

2 The farm referred to was Oulton Hall farm, often referred to as 
Oulton Hall. 



422 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

which I believe will pay your interest up to Midsummer. If there 
is anything incorrect pray inform me. God bless you. Kind 
regards to Miss Harvey. George Borrow. 



To Mrs. MacOubrey 

Dear Henrietta, — As soon as Smith has paid his Michaelmas 
rent I will settle your interest up to Midsummer. Twenty-one 
pounds was, I think, then due to you, as you received five pounds 
on the account of the present year. If, however, you are in want 
of money let me know forthwith, and I will send you a small cheque. 
The document which I mentioned has been witnessed by Mrs. 
Church and her daughter. It is in one of the little tin boxes on 
the lower shelf of the closet nearest to the window in my bedroom. 
I was over at Mattishall some weeks ago. Things there look very 
unsatisfactory. H. and his mother now owe me i?20 or more. 
The other man a year's rent for a cottage and garden, and two 
years' rent for the gardens of two cottages unoccupied. I am just 
returned from Norwich where I have been to speak to F. I have 
been again pestered by Pilgrim's successor about the insurance of 
the property. He pretends to have insured again. A more 
impudent thing was probably never heard of. He is no agent of 
mine, and I will have no communication with him. I have insured 
myself in the Union Office, and have lately received my second 
policy. I have now paid upwards of twelve pounds for policies. 
F. says that he told him months ago that the demand he made 
would not be allowed, that I insured myself and was my own agent, 
and that as he shall see him in a few days he will tell him so again. 
Oh what a source of trouble that wretched fellow Pilgrim has been 
both to you and me, 

I wish very much to come up to London. But I cannot leave 
the country under present circumstances. There is not a person 
in these parts in whom I can place the slightest confidence. I 
must inform you that at our interview F. said not a word about 
the matter in Chancery. God bless you. Kind remembrances to 
Dr. M. George Borrow. 



HENRIETTA CLARKE 423 

To Mrs. MacOubrey 

Dear Henrietta, — I wish to know how you are. I shall 
shortly send a cheque for thirteen pounds, which I believe will 
settle the interest account up to Michaelmas. If you see anything 
inaccurate pray inform me. I am at present tolerably well, but of 
late have been very much troubled with respect to my people. 
Since I saw you I have been three times over to Mattishall, but 
with very little profit. The last time I was there I got the key of 
the house from that fellow Hill, and let the place to another 
person who I am now told is not much better. One comfort is that 
he cannot be worse. But now there is a difficulty. Hill refuses 
to yield up the land, and has put padlocks on the gates. These I 
suppose can be removed as he is not in possession of the key of the 
house. On this point, however, I wish to be certain. As for the 
house, he and his mother, who is in a kind of partnership with 
him, have abandoned it for two years, the consequence being that 
the windows are dashed out, and the place little better than a 
ruin. During the four years he has occupied the land he has been 
cropping it, and the crops have invariably been sold before being 
reaped, and as soon as reaped carried off. During the last two 
years there has not been a single live thing kept on the premises, 
not so much as a hen. He now says that there are some things in 
the house belonging to him. Anything, however, which he has 
left is of course mine, though I don't believe that what he has left 
is worth sixpence. I have told the incoming tenant to deliver up 
nothing, and not permit him to enter the house on any account. 
He owes me ten or twelve pounds, arrears of rent, and at least 
fifteen for dilapidations. I think the fellow ought to be threatened 
with an action, but I know not whom to employ. I don't wisii to 
apply to F. Perhaps Dr. M.'s London friend might be spoken to. 
I believe Hill's address is Alfred Hill, Mattishall, Norfolk, but the 
place which he occupied of me is at Mattishall Burgh. I shall be 
glad to hear from you as soon as is convenient. I iiave anything 
but reason to be satisfied with the conduct of S. He is cropping 
the ground most unmercifully, and is sending sacks of game off the 
premises every week. Surely he must be mad, as he knows I can 
turn him out next Michaelmas. God bless you. Kind regards to 
Dr. M. Take care of this. George Borrow, 



424 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

To Mrs. MacOubrey 

Dear Henrietta, — I was glad to hear that you had obtained 
your dividend. I was afraid that you would never get it. I shall 
be happy to see you and Dr. M. about the end of the month. 
Michaelmas is near at hand, when your half-year's interest becomes 
due. God bless you. Kind remembrances to Dr. M. 

George Borrow. 



OuLToN, Lowestoft, November 29th, 1874. 

Dear Henrietta, — I send a cheque for oPlS, which will settle 
the interest account up to Michaelmas last. On receipt of this 
have the kindness to send me a line. I have been to Norwich, 
and now know all about your affair. I saw Mr. Durrant, who, 
it seems, is the real head of the firm to which I go. He received 
me in the kindest manner, and said he was very glad to see me. 
I inquired about J.P.'s affairs. He appeared at first not desirous 
to speak about them, but presently became very communicative. 
I inquired who had put the matter into Chancery, and he told 
me he himself, which I was very glad to hear. I asked whether 
the mortgagees would get their money, and he replied that he 
had no doubt they eventually would, as far as principal was 
concerned. I spoke about interest, but on that point he gave 
me slight hopes. He said that the matter, if not hurried, would 
turn out tolerably satisfactory, but if it were, very little would 
be obtained. It appears that the unhappy creature who is gone 
had been dabbling in post obit bonds, at present almost valueless, 
but likely to become available. He was in great want of money 
shortly before he died. Now, dear, pray keep up your spirits ; 
I hope and trust we shall meet about Christmas. Kind i-egards 
to Dr. M. George Borrow. 

Keep this. Send a line by return of post. 



To Mrs. MacOubrey 

Dear Henrietta, — I thought I would write to you as it seems 
a long time since I heard from you. I have been on my expedi- 



HENRIETTA CLARKE 425 

tion and have come back safe. I had a horrible time of it 
on the sea — small dirty boat crowded Avith people and rough 
weather. Poor Mr. Brightwell is I am sorry to say dead — died 
in January. I saw Mr, J. and P. and had a good deal of conver- 
sation with them which I will talk to you about when I see you. 
Mr. P. sent an officer over to M. I went to Oulton, and as soon 
as I got there I found one of the farm cottages nearly in ruins ; 
the gable had fallen down — more expense ! but I said that some 
willow trees must be cut down to cover it. The place upon the 
whole looks very beautiful. C. full of complaints, though I 
believe he has a fine time of it. He and T. are at daggers 
drawn. I am sorry to tell you that poor Mr. Leathes is dying — 
called, but could not see him, but he sent down a kind message 
to me. .The family, however, were rejoiced to see me and 
wanted me to stay. The scoundrel of a shoemaker did not 
send the shoes. I thought he would not. The shirt-collars 
were much too small. I, however, managed to put on the shirts 
and am glad of them. At Norwich I saw Lucy, who appears to 
be in good spirits. Many people have suffered dreadfully there 
from the failure of the Bank — her brother, amongst others, has 
been let in. I shall have much to tell you when I see you. 
I am glad that the Prussians are getting on so famously. The 
Pope it seems has written a letter to the King of Prussia and is 
asking favours of him. A low old fellow ! ! ! Remember me 
kindly to Miss H., and may God bless you ! Bring this back. 

George Borroav. 



To Mrs. MacOubrey 

March 6, 1873. 

Dear Henrietta, — I was so grieved to hear that you were 
unwell. Pray take care of yourself, and do not go out in this 
dreadful weather. Send and get, on my account, six bottles of 
good port wine. Good port may be had at the cellar at the 
corner of Charles Street, opposite the Hospital near Hereford 
Square — I think the name of the man is Kitchenham. Were I 
in London I would bring it myself. Do send for it. May God 
Almighty bless you ! George Borrow. 



426 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 
To Mrs. MacOubrey 

Norwich, July 12, 1873. 
Dear Henrietta, — I shall be glad to see you and Dr. M, as 
soon as you can make it convenient to come. As for my coming 
up to London it is quite out of the question. I am suffering 
greatly, and here I am in this solitude without medicine or 
advice. I want very much to pay you up your interest. I can 
do so without the slightest inconvenience. I have money. It 
is well I have, as it seems to be almost my only friend. God 
bless you. Kind regards to Dr. M. George Borrow. 

Here I find a letter from Mrs. MacOubrey to her 
stepfather : 

To George Borrow, Esq. 

SouTHGATE HousE, BuRY St. Edmunds, Novhv. 25th, 1873. 

My beloved Friend, — I sincerely trust that you are well, and 
received my letter which I sent about ten days ago. Miss Harvey 
is pretty well and very kind, and it really is a great pleasure to 
be here during the dark foggy month of November, the most 
disagreeable in London. I saw Miss Beevor the other day ; she 
is confined to the house with rheumatism and a strain ; she was 
so pleased to see me, and talked about the Images of Mildenhall. 
They now set up for the great county gentry ; give very grand 
entertainments, dinners, etc., and go also to grand dinners, so 
their time is fully taken up going and receiving; they never 
scarce honour the little paltry town of Bury St. Edmunds. Bloom- 
field, the old butler, is gone to service again ; he could not bear 
himself without horses, so he is gone to the Wigsons, near Bury, 
where he will have plenty of hunters to look after ; he wished to 
live with Miss Harvey. 

Poor Miss Borton died about a week ago; she did not live 
long to enjoy the huge fortune her brother left. Bury seems 
very much changing its inhabitants, but there are still some nice 
people. I shall always like it while dear Miss Harvey lives ; she 
is so very kind to me. It is extremely cold, but we keep tre- 
mendous fires, which combats it. 

I do sincerely trust, dear, that you are well. I should like to 



HENRIETTA CLARKE 427 

have a line just to say how you are. I return to London about 
the 6th of Decbr., not later, but you see Miss Harvey likes to 
keep me as long as she can, and I am very happy with her, but at 
that time I shall be sure to be at home. If you were going up to 
London I would leave sooner. If you want any medicine or any- 
thing, only let me know and you shall have it. 

Accept my most afFec. love, and believe me ever, your attached 
dauirhter, Henrietta MacOubrev. 

P.S. — Miss Harvey desires her kind regards. May God bless 
you. 

To Mrs. MacOubrey, 50 Charlotte Street, Fitzroy 
Square, London 

OrLTON^ Lowestoft, Ap)'il 1, 1874. 

Dear Henrietta, — I have received your letter of the 30th 
March. Since I last wrote I have not been well. I have had a 
great pain in the left jaw which almost prevented me from eating. 
I am, however, better now. I shall be glad to see you and Dr. M. 
as soon as you can conveniently come. Send me a line to say 
when I may expect you. I have no engagements. Before you 
come call at No. 36 to inquire whether anything has been sent 
there. Leverton had better be employed to make a couple of 
boxes or cases for the books in the sacks. The sacks can be put 
on the top in the inside. There is an old coat in one of the sacks 
in the pocket of which are papers. Let it be put in with its 
contents just as it is. I wish to have the long white chest and 
the two deal boxes also brought down. Buy me a thick under- 
waistcoat like that I am now wearing, and a lighter one for the 
summer. Worsted socks are of no use — they scarcely last a day. 
Cotton ones are poor things, but they are better than worsted. 
Kind regards to Dr. M. God bless you ! 

Return me this when you come. George Borrow. 

To Mrs. MacOubrey, 50 Charlotte Street, Fitzroy 
Square, London 

OuLTON, Nov. 14, 1876. 
Dear Henrietta, — You may buy me a large silk handkerchief, 



428 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

like the one you brought before. I shall be glad to see you and 
Dr. M. I am very unwell. Geouge Borrow, 



To Mrs. MacOubrey 

Dear Henrietta, — I shall be glad to see you and Dr. M. as 
soon as you can make it convenient. In a day or two the house 
will be in good repair and very comfortable. I want you to go 
to the bank and have the cheque placed to my account. Lady 
Day is nigh at hand, and it must be seen after. Buy for me a 
pair of those hollow ground razors and tell Dr. M. to bring a little 
laudanum. Come if you can on the first of March. It is dear 
Mama's birthday. God bless you ! Kind regards to Dr. M. 

George Borrow. 

To Mrs. MacOubrey, 50 Charlotte Street, Fitzroy 
Square, London 

Mrs. Chl'kch's, Lady's Lane, Norwich, Feb. 28, 1877. 
Dear Henrietta, — I received your letter this morning with 
the document. The other came to hand at Oulton before I left. 
I showed Mr. F. the first document on Wednesday, and he 
expressed then a doubt with regard to the necessity of an affidavit 
from me, but he said it would perhaps be necessary for him to see 
the security. I saw him again this morning and he repeated 
the same thing. To-night he is going to write up to his agent 
on the subject, and on Monday I am to know what is requisite to 
be done — therefore pray keep in readiness. On Tuesday, perhaps, 
I shall return to Oulton, but I don't know. I shall write again 
on Monday. God bless you. George Borrow. 

Borrow died, as we have seen, in 1881, and was 
buried by the side of his wife in Brompton Cemetery. 
By his will, dated 1st December 1880, he be- 
queathed all his property to his stepdaughter, making 
his friend, Elizabeth Harvey, her co-executrix. The 
will, a copy of which is before me, has no public 
interest, but it may be noted that Miss Harvey 



HENRIETTA CLARKE 429 

refused to act, as the following letter to Mrs. Mac- 
Oubrey testifies ^ : 



To Mrs. MaeOubrey 

Bury St. Edmunds, August 18tli. 

My dearest Henrietta, — I was just preparing to write to you 
when yours arrived together with Mrs. Reeve's despatch. You 
know how earnestly I desire your welfare — but because I do so I 
earnestly advise you immediately to exercise the right you have of 
appointing another trustee in my place. I am sure it will be best 
for you. You ought to have a trustee at least not older than 
yourself, and one who has health and strength for discharging the 
office. I knozo what are the duties of a trustee. There 's alxcays 
a considerable responsibility involved in the discharge of the 
duties of a trustee — and it may easily occur that great responsi- 
bility may be thrown on them, and it may become an anxious 
business fit only for those who have youth and health and 
strength of mind, and are likely to live. 

My dear friend, you do not like to realise the old age of your 



^ Another letter from Miss Harvey, dated 1st August, is one of sympathy, 
and there are passages in it that may well be taken to heart when it is con- 
sidered that jMiss Harvey was the most intimate friend of Borrow and his 
stepdaughter : 

' Bury, August Ist, 1881. 

' Dearest Friend, — Though I cannot be with you in your trouble I am 
continually thinking of you, and praying that all needful help and comfort 
may be sent to you as you need and how you need it. I have no means of 
hearing any particulars, and am most anxious to know how you do, and 
how you have got through the last painful week. Whenever you feel able 
write me a {ew words, I await them with much anxiety. When you are able 
to realise the reality of his eternal gain — you will feel that all is well. A 
great spirit, a great and noble spirit, has passed from the earth, his earthly 
tabernacle is taken down to be raised again — glorious and immortal, a fitting 
abode for a spiriit of the just made perfect. How wonderful are those words, 
" made perfect." We are even now part of that grand assembly where they 
dwell. " We are come to the general assembly and church of the first born 
which are written in heaven. To God the judge of all, to Jesus the Media- 
tor, to an innumerable company of angels, etc. , to the *pjn7.y of the just made 
perfect," Let us realise our communion with them even now, and soon to 



430 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

dear friends, but you must consider that I am quite past the age 
for such an office, and my invalid state often prevents my attend- 
ing to my own small affairs. I have no relation or confidential 
triend who can act for me. My executors were Miss Venn and 
John Venn. Miss Venn departed last February to a better land. 
John is in such health with heart disease that he cannot move far 
from his home — he writes as one ready and desiring to depart. I 
do not expect to see him again. So you see, my dearest friend, I 
am not able to undertake this trusteeship, and I think the sooner 
you consult Mrs. Reeve as to the appointment of another trustee 
— the better it will be — and the more permanent. Had I known 
it was Mr. Borrow's intention to put down my name I should have 
prevented it, and he would have seen that an aged and invalid 
lady was not the person to carry out his wishes — for I am quite 
unable. 

I pray that a fit person may be induced to undertake the 

meet them on the Resurrection Morn — when they who sleep in Jesus will 
God bring with Him . . . and so we shall be ever with the Lord. 

Ever with the Lord, 

Amen, ao let it be. 
Life from the dead is in that word, 

'Tis immortality. 

Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord, their works do follow them. 
Your beloved father's work in Spain will follow him. His efforts to spread 
the word of God in that benighted land, ever has and ever will bring forth 
blessed fruits. Dearest Henrietta, be comforted, you have been a most 
devoted daughter to him, and latterly his greatest earthly comfort ; your 
dear husband also ; and together you have tended him to the last. He now 
rests in peace. All the sufferings of mind and body are over for ever. You 
will have much earthly business on your hands. I pray that you may be 
directed in all things by true wisdom. The time is short, we must set our 
houses in order, that we may not be unnecessarily burdened with earthly 
cares. Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content. 

' Let us be without carefulness, and so quietly and piously spend the 
remnant of our days — ever growing in the knowledge of Christ, and finding 
in Him all our comfort and all our joy, and when our own time of departure 
shall arrive may we be o-eady and able to say, " I have a desire to depart and 
be with Christ, which is far better." The path of the just is as the shining 
light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day. May our path be 
so lighted up — until the day break and the shadows flee away. Dearest 
friend, do write soon. I am so anxious to hear how Dr. MacOubrey is. — 
Your most affect, friend, E. Harvey. 



HENRIETTA CLARKE 431 

business, and that it may please God so to order all for your 
good. It is indeed the greatest mercy that your dear husband is 
well enough to afford you such help and such comfort. Pray hire 
a proper servant who will obey orders. — In haste, ever yrs. affec- 
tionately, E. Harvey. 

Another letter that has some bearing upon 
Borrow's last days is worth printing here : 

To Mrs. MacOubrey 

Yarmouth, August 19, 1881. 
My dear Mrs. MacOubrey, — I was very sorry indeed to hear 
of Mr. Borrow's death. I thought he looked older the last time I 
saw him, but with his vigorous constitution I have not thought 
the end so near. You and Mr. MacOubrey have the comfort of 
knowing that you have attended affectionately to his declining 
years, which would otherwise have been very lonely. I have been 
abroad for a short time, and this has prevented me from replying 
to your kind letter before. Pray receive the assurance of my 
sympathy, and with my kind remembrances to Mr. MacOubrey, 
believe me, yours very truly, R. H. Ixglis Palgrave. 

Three years later Dr. MacOubrey died in his 
eighty-fourth year, and was interred at Oulton. Mrs. 
MacOubrey lived for a time at Oulton and then re- 
moved to Yarmouth. A letter that she wrote to a 
friend soon after the death of her husband is perhaps 
some index to her character : 

Oulton Cottage, Oulton, Nr. Lowestoft, Sept. Zrd, 1884. 
My dear Sir, — I beg to thank you for your kind thought of 
me. On Sunday night the 24th Augst., it pleased God to take 
from me my excellent and beloved husband — his age was nearly 
84. He sunk simply from age and weakness. 1 was his nurse 
by night and by day, administering constant nourishment, but 
he became weaker and weaker, till at last 'The silver cord was 



432 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

loosed.' My dear father died about this time three years since, 
which makes the blow more stunning. I feel very lonely now in 
my secluded residence on the banks of the Broad — the music of 
the wild birds adds not to my pleasure now. Trusting that your- 
self and Mrs. S may long be spared. — Believe me to remain, 

yours very truly, Henrietta MacOubrey. 

The cottage at Oulton was soon afterwards pulled 
down, but the summer-house where Borrow wrote a 
portion of his Bible in Spain and his other works 
remained for some years. That ultimately an entirely 
new structure took its place may be seen by comparing 
the roof in Mrs. MacOubrey 's drawing with the illus- 
tration of the structure as it is to-day. Mrs. Mac- 
Oubrey died in 1903 at Yarmouth, and the following 
inscription may be found on her tomb in Oulton 
Churchyard : 

Sacred to the memory of Henrietta Mary, widow of William 
MacOubrey, only daughter of Lieut. Henry Clarke, R.N., and 
Mary Skepper, his wife, and stepdaughter of George Henry 
Borrow, Esq., the celebrated author of The Bible in Spain, The 
Gypsies of Spain, Lavengro, The Romany Rye, Wild Wales, and 
other works and translations. Henrietta Mary MacOubrey was 
born at Oulton Hall in this Parish, May 17th, 1818, and died 
23rd December 1903. ' And He shall give His angels charge over 
thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.' — Psalm xci. 11. 

The following extract from her will is of interest as 
indicating the trend of a singularly kindly nature. The 
intimate friends of Mrs. MacOubrey 's later years, whose 
opinion is of more value than that of village gossips, 
speak of her in terms of sincere affection : 

I give the following charitable legacies, namely, to the London 
Bible Society, in remembrance of the great interest my dear father, 
George Henry Borrow, took in the success of its great work for 



HENRIETTA CLARKE 433 

the benefit of mankind, the sum of one hundred pounds. To the 
Foreign Missionary Society the sum of one hundred pounds. To 
the London Religious Tract Society the sum of one hundred 
pounds. To the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals, the sum of one hundred pounds. 



2e 



CHAPTER XXXVII 

THE AFTERMATH 
' We are all Borrovians now.' — Augustine Birrell. 

It is a curious fact that of only two men of distinction 
in English letters in these later years can it be said that 
they lived to a good old age and yet failed of recogni- 
tion for work that is imperishable. Many poets have 
died young — Shelley and Keats for example — to whom 
this public recognition was refused in their lifetime. But 
given the happiness of reaching middle age, this recogni- 
tion has never failed. It came, for example, to Words- 
worth and Coleridge long after their best work was done. 
It came with more promptness to all the great Victorian 
novelists. This recognition did not come in their life- 
time to two Suffolk friends, Edward FitzGerald with 
Omar Khayyam and George Borrow with Lavengro. 
In the case of FitzGerald there was probably no con- 
sciousness that he had produced a great poem. In any 
case his sunny Irish temperament could easily have 
surmounted disappointment if he had expected any- 
thing from the world in the way of literary fame. 
Borrow was quite differently made. He was as intense 
an egoist as Rousseau, whose work he had probably 
never read, and would not have appreciated if he had 
read. He longed for the recognition of the multitude 
through his books, and thoroughly enjoyed it when it 

434 



THE AFTERMATH 435 

was given to him for a moment — for his Bible in Spain. 
Such appreciation as he received in his Hfetime was 
given to him for that book and for no other. There 
were here and there enthusiasts for his Lavengro and 
Romany Rye. Dr. Jessopp has told us that he was 
one. But it was not until long after his death that 
the word ' Borrovian ' ^ came into the language. Not a 
single great author among his contemporaries praised 
him for his Lavengro, the book for which we most 
esteem him to-day. His name is not mentioned by 
Carlyle or Tennyson or Ruskin in all their voluminous 
works. Among the novelists also he is of no account. 
Dickens and Thackeray and George Eliot knew him 
not. Charlotte Bronte does indeed write of him with 
enthusiasm," but she is alone among the great Victorian 
authors in this particular. Borrow's Lavengro received 
no commendation from contemporary writers of the 
first rank. He died in his seventy-eighth year an 
obscure recluse whose works were all but forgotten. 
Since that year, 1881, his fame has been continually 
growing. His greatest work, Lavengro^ has been 
reprinted with introductions by many able critics;' 

* A word that is very misleading, as no writer was ever so little the 
founder of a school. 

' Although this fact was not known until 1908 when I published The 
Brontes : Life and Letters. See vol. ii. p. 24, where Charlotte Bronte writes : 
' In George Borrow's works I found a wild fascination, a vivid graphic 
power of description, a fresh originality, an athletic simplicity, which give 
them a stamp of their own.' 

^ Theodore Watts- Dunton, Augustine Birrell, Francis Hindes Groome, 
and Thomas Seccombe. Lionel Johnson's essay on Borrow is the more 
valuable in its enthusiasm in that it was written by a Roman Catholic. 
Writing in the Outlook (April 1, 1899) he said : 

' What the four books mean and are to their lovers is upon this sort. 
Written by a man of intense personality, irresistible in his hold upon your 
attention, they take you far afield from weary cares and business into the 
enamouring airs of the open world, and into days when the countryside was 



436 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 

notable essayists have proclaimed his worth. Of these 
Mr. Watts-Dunton and Mr. Augustine Birrell have 
been the most assiduous. The efforts of the former 
have already been noted. Mr. Birrell has expressed 
his devotion in more than one essay. ^ Referring to a 
casual reference by Robert Louis Stevenson to TJie 
Bible ill Spain,- in which R. L. S. speaks well of that 
book, Mr. Birrell, not without irony, says : 

It is interesting to know this, interesting, that is, to the great 
Clan Stevenson, who owe suit and service to their liege lord ; 
but so Tar as Borrow is concerned, it does not matter, to speak 
frankly, two straws. The author of Lavengro, The Romany Rye, 
The Bible in Spain, and Wild Wales is one of those kings of litera- 
ture who never need to number their tribe. His personality will 
always secure him an attendant company, who, when he pipes, 
must dance. 



uncontaminated by the vulgar conventions which form the worst side of 
" civilised " life in cities. They give you the sense of emancipation, of 
manumission into the liberty of the winding road and fragrant forest, into 
the freshness of an ancient country-life, into a milieu where men are not copies 
of each other. And you fall in with strange scenes of adventure, great or 
small, of which a strange man is the centre as he is the scribe ; and from a 
description of a lonely glen you are plunged into a dissertation upon difficult 
old tongues, and from dejection into laughter, and from gypsydom intojournal- 
ism, and everything is equally delightful, and nothing that the strange 
man shows you can come amiss. And you will hardly make up your mind 
whether he is most Don Quixote, or Rousseau, or Luther, or Defoe ; but you 
will always love these books by a brave man who travelled in far lands, 
travelled far in his own land, travelled the way of life for close upon eighty 
years, and died in perfect solitude. And this will be the least you can say, 
though he would not have you say it — Requiescat in pace Viator.' 

^ In Res Judicatcp, 1892 (a paper reprinted from The Reflector, Jan. 8, 1888), 
in his introduction to Lavengro (Macmillan, 1900), in an essay entitled 
* The Office of Literature,' in the second series of Obiter Dicta, and in an 
address at Norwich, on July 5, 1913, reprinted in fpll in the Eastern Daily 
Press of July 7, 1913. 

* There are but three references to Borrow in Stevenson's writings, all 
of them perfunctory. These are in Memories and Portraits (' A Gossip on a 
novel of Dumas' '), in Familiar Studies of Men and Books (' Some aspects of 
Robert Burns'), and in The Ideal House. 



THE AFTERMATH 487 

This is to sum up the situation to perfection. You 
cannot force people to become readers of Borrow by 
argument, by criticism, or by the force of authority. 
You reach the stage of admiration and even love by 
effects which rise remote from all questions of style or 
taste. To say, as does a recent critic, that 'there is 
something in Borrow after all ; not so much as most 
people suppose, but still a great deal,'^ is to miss the 
compelling power of his best books as they strike those 
with whom they are among the finest things in litera- 
ture." In attempting to interest new readers in the man 
— and this book is not for the sect called Borrovians, 
to whom I recommend the earlier biographies, but for 
a wider public which knows not Borrow — I hope I 
shall succeed in sending many to those incomparable 
works, which have given me so many pleasant hours. 

» The Spectator, July 12, 1913. 

' On July 0, 1913, Dr. H. C. Beechiug, Dean of Norwich, preached a 
scrmou on Borrow in Norwich Cathedral, which in its graceful literary 
enthusiasm may be counted the culminating point of recognition of Borrow 
so far, when the place is considered. The sermon has been published by 
Jarrold and Sous of Norwich. 



INDEX 



AiKiN, Dr., quarrels with Phillips, 
90. 

Lucy, 90 ; on Mrs. John 

Taylor, 64 ; on William Taylor, 
66. 

Ainsworth, Harrison, Lavengro criti- 
cised by, 278. 

Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain, 
by Bowring, 140. 

Andre, Major, trial of, included in 
Bori'ow's volumes, 113. 

Annah of the Harford Family, re- 
ference to Borrow in, 245. 

Apologia pro Vita Sua, by J. H. New- 
man, 345. 

Arden, F., 111. 

Athentxum, The, founding of, 90 ; 
Hasfeld's letter on Russian litera- 
ture and Borrow in, 165-166 ; 
friendly review of 2'he Zincali in, 
227 ; publishes letters from Bor- 
row, 240 ; severely criticises 
Lavengroi 278, 347 — and Romany 
Rye, 347; reminiscences of Bor- 
row contributed to, 315-316 ; con- 
temptuous notice of Romano Lavo- 
Lil in, 361 ; obituary of Borrow 
in, 391. 

Austin, John, 64. 

Sarah, 55. 

Autobiographical Recollections of Sir 
John Bowring, 139. 

Autobiography of Harriet Martineau, 
quoted, 65. 

B 

Baldrey, S. H., reminiscences of the 
Borrows published by, 416-420. 

Barbauld, Mrs., 67, 90. 

Barclay, Mrs. Florence, addresses 
Bible Society meeting, 183-184. 



Bards of the Gael and Gaul, by Dr. 
Sigerson ; editions published of, 
408. 

Baretti, Joseph, witnesses at trial of, 
114. 

Barron, James, on Borrow's itiner 
ary in Scotland, 330, 331. 

Bathurst, Bishop, 67, HO. 

Beeching, Dr., 184; graceful re- 
cognition of Borrow in sermon of, 
437. 

Belcher, pugilist, 130, 131. 

Bell, Catherine, 55. 

Benjamin Robert Haydonj Correspond- 
ence and Table Talk, by F. W. 
Haydon, 25. 

Benson, A. C, verses on "^ My Poet,' 
312. 

Best, Mr. Justice, his ' Great Mind, 
123. 

Bible in Spain, The, 180, 201, 202, 
289 ; much sheer invention in, 
136, 313; quoted, 182-183, 210, 
238-239 ; episode of the blind girl, 
192 ; brings fame to Borrow, 227, 
243-244; the title of, 237-238; 
criticisms of Mr. Murray's reader 
on copy of — number of copies sold 
— referred to in House of Com- 
mons, 243 ; reviews of, 243, 250, 
278 ; how written, 279 ; Glad- 
stone's admiration of, 313, 397 ; 
Cowell's opinion of, 356. 

Birrell, Augustine, 237, 238 ; story 
told by, 128 ; introduction to 
Lavengro by, 435, 436. 
Blackwood's Magazine, condemns 

Lavengro, 278. 
Borrow, Ann, mother of Borrow 
2, 6, 10, 139, 219 ; life in Norwich 
of, 12-17, 71; correspondence of, 
17, 33-36, 188, 193-196, 220; 

i death — inscription on tomb of, 314. 

439 



440 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 



Borrow, Elizabeth, 293. 

George Henry, biographical 

drafts and family history of, 1-7; 
wandering childhood of, 36-63 ; 
schooldays and schoolfellows at 
Norwich of, 71-78 ; struggles and 
failure in London, 96-102 ; Celtic 
ancestry of, 364 ; characteristics 
of, 14, 15, 161, 285, 312-313, 316- 
317, 350, 361, 393, 405-412, 434 ; 
agent for Bible Society, 169, 191; 
facsimile of an account of the 
Society with, 190 ; work for the 
Society in— Portugal, 184-185— 
Russia, 162-178— Spain, 179-214; 
imprisonments of, 134, 191, 198, 
222 ; correspondence of, with — 
Bowring, 142-161 — Brackenbury, 
198-200— Ford, 250-259— Haydon, 
25 — Jerningham, 198 — Henrietta 
MacOubrey, 421-428 — publishers 
of Faustus, 108 — Secretary at War, 
28-32— his wife, 223-225, 261-268, 
272-273, 319, 325-335, 340; 
Darwin asks information from, 
317-318 ; handwriting of, 275 ; 
fails to become a magistrate, 214, 
313-314 ; feeling of, as regards 
people and language of Ireland, 
60, 296-297; friends of later years, 
389-400 ; life of, in London, 379- 
388 — in Oulton Broad and Yar- 
mouth, 304-320 ; attainments of, 
as a linguist, 3, 4, 51, 68, 138- 
139, 412 ; advertisement of, as 
a Professor of Languages, 409 ;|;his 
ignorance of philology, 357; liter- 
ary tastes of, 2, 11, 38, 135, 344- 
346, 390; literary methods of, 240- 
243, 285 ; attitude towards literary 
men of, 317, 347, 393 ; fmarriage 
of, 3, 198-199, 220-223, 225 ; per- 
sonal appearance of, 226, 260-261, 
293, 309-311, 316-317, 339, 385, 
397-398 ; physical vigour of, 383, 
419-420; political sympathies of, 
181; existing portraits of, 382; 
pugilistic tastes of, 126-132 ; on a 
phase of folklore, 235-236; on 
theory of Jewish origin of the Gyp- 
sies, 308-309 ; on Spiritualism, 386; 
translations by, 82, 133-137, 187, 
247, 404-405 ; travels in — Austria- 
Hungary, 261-268— Greece and 
Italy, 272-273— Ireland, 339-340— 



Portugal, 184-186— Russia, 162- 
178— Scotland, 321 -330— Spain, 
179-214— Wales, 364-366, 374- 
378 ; unfounded reports as to 
neglect of, when dying, 414-415 ; 
unrecognised genius and growing 
fame of, 312-318, 435-436; Yar- 
mouth rescue episode, 290-293. 

Borrow, Henry, 293. 

John, grandfather of George 

Henry, 3-6. 

John Thomas, 4, 6, 49, 60 ; 

Captain Borrow's love of, 8, 19 ; 
described in Lavengro, 18-19 ; pic- 
tures by, 21 ; career and death of, 
19-35. 

Mary, 218, 219, 222, 277, 278 ; 

correspondence with — Ann Bor- 
row, 365-366— G. H. Borrow, 157- 
158, 246, 261-274, 294, 374-376, 
379-382— Clarke, 216-217--Hake, 
394-396 ; epitaph written for, by 
Borrow, 215 ; family history of, 
214-217 ; housekeeping genius of, 
415; marriage of, 157-158, 225; 
unpublished works of, 295 ; death 
of, 383, 387. 

Captain Thomas, 19, 20, 36, 49, 

87, 293 ; descent of, 2-5 ; military 
career of, 5-7 ; references to, in 
Lavengro, 8-11 ; prejudiced against 
the Irish, 60, 52 ; pensioned off, 
70 ; his fight with Big Ben Brain, 
126, 129. 

William, 293. 

Bowring, Sir John, collaboration with 
Borrow, 136 ; correspondence of, 
with Borrow, 142-152, 184-186, 
235, 401-402; described by Bor- 
row, 141-142 ; Borrow's misunder- 
standing with, 290 ; Borrow's rela- 
tions with, 138-162. 

Boyd, Robert, 249. 

Brace, Charles L., 264. 

Brackenbury, Mr., letter from, to 
Borrow, 198-200. 

Brain, Big Ben, supposed fight be- 
tween Captain Borrow and, 8, 9, 
10 ; career of, 129, 130. 

Brandram, Rev. Mr., 169; corres- 
pondence of, with Borrow, 171-173, 
180-182, 189-192, 221-222; letter 
from, to Mrs. Borrow, 188 ; repro- 
duction of portion of Borrow's 
letter to, 187. 



INDEX 



441 



Bri^htwell, Cecilia, letter from, to 
Mary Borrow, 16. 

British and Foreign Bible Society, 
aided by the Gurneys, 62 ; Sor- 
row's connection with, 3, 133, 153- 
196 ; growth and procedure of, 
155-157 ; sanctioned in Russia by 
the Czar, 166-157 ; number of bibles 
issued in Spain for three years up 
to 1913, 184 ; work of, in Spain, 
182-200 ; facsimile of an account 
with Borrow of the, 190 ; breezy 
controversy between Borrow and 
the, 191. 

Brodripp, A. A., 90. 

Bronte, Charlotte, writes of Borrow 
with enthusiasm, 435. 

Brontes, The, by Clement Shorter, 
quoted, 435. 

Brooke, Rajah, 17, 71, 72. 

Brown, Rev. Arthur, 40, 41. 

Browne, Sir Thomas, 54. 

Browning, Robert, 114. 

Buchini, Antonio, Borrow's attendant 
in Spain, 189. 

Bunsens, the invitation given to 
Borrow by, 245. 

Bunyan, what Borrow owed to, 346. 

Burcham, Thomas, 81 ; letter from, 
to The Britannia on Lavengro, 17. 

Burke, Edmund, 114. 

Bury Post, The, account in, of life- 
saving by Borrow at Yarmouth, 
290. 

Buxton, SirT. F., 56. 

Lady, 56, 58. 



Cagliostro, trial of, included in Bor- 
row's volumes, 113. 

Caius, John, 71. 

Campbell, Thomas, 82, 111. 

Cannon, Sergeant, 5. 

Canton, William, 156. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 154, 163; point of 
similitude between Borrow and, 
377 ; on Edward FitzGerald, 351 ; 
prejudiced against Scott, 67, 108. 

Celebrated Trials, Borrow's first piece 
of hack-work, 97 ; payment made 
to Borrow for, 113; distinguishing 
feature of, 114; dramatic episodes 
in, 114-116. 



Celtic Bards, unpublished work of 
Borrow, 294, 404 ; merits of, 
408. 

Chiefs and Kings, unpublished work 
of Borrow, 404 ; merits of, 408. 

Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, picture 
by Haydon, 24. 

Clarendon, Earl of, 289 ; befriends 
Borrow in Spain, 140, 186 ; career 
of, and services to Borrow, 210- 
214 ; facsimile of letter to Borrow 
from, 211. 

Clarke, Lieutenant Henry, 216, 219. 

Dr. Samuel, 71. 

Cobbe, Frances Power, 344 ; her 
opinion of Borrow, 154 ; her story 
of Borrow and James Martiueau, 
77 ; unkindly glimpses of Borrow 
given by — her character and works, 
383-385 ; Borrow's rudeness to, 
388. 

Cobham, Lord, trial of, included in 
Borrow's volumes, 113. 

Cockburn, Lord, on David Haggart, 
46. 

Coke, Lord Chief Justice, 71. 

Collins, Mortimer, his appreciation 
of Wild Wales, 372-373 ; works of, 
373. 

Collinson, Robert, 383. 

Combe, George, phrenological obser- 
vations of, regarding David Hag- 
gart, 46. 

Cooke, Robert, 361. 

Comhill Magazine, The, reviews Wild 
Wales unfavourably, 367. 

'Corporation Feast, The,' plate of, 
borrowed for Life and Death of 
Faustus, 103. 

Cowell, Professor E. C, friendship 
of, with FitzGerald, 354-355 ; de- 
scribes interview with Borrow, 
355-357. 

Cowper, poet, Borrow's devotion to, 
2,38. 

Cozens-Hardy, A., 309. 

Crabbe, Mrs., 419. 

George, FitzGerald's letter to, 

360. 

Cribb, pugilist, 130, 131. 

Croft, Sir Herbert, 115. 

Crome, John, 21, 22, 56, 70. 

Cunningham, Mrs., 56. 

Allan, writes introduction in 

verse to Romantic Ballads : corres- 



442 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 



poTidence with Borrow, 107 ; en- 
courages Borrow, 108-109. 

Cunningham, Rev. Francis, befriends 
Borrow with the Bible Society, 56, 
62, 156, 158 ; his praise of Borrow, 
179, 218. 

Rev. John W., 156, 217. 



D 



Dairiiman's Daughter, The, extra- 
ordinary vogue of, 97 ; Borrow's 
failure to appreciate, 155. 

Dalrymple, Arthur, on schooldays of 
Borrow, 73-74 ; on Borrow and his 
wife, 225 ; ridicules story of life- 
saving by Borrow at Yarmouth, 
291. 

John, joins Borrow in a school- 
boy escapade, 73, 75. 

Darwin, Charles, facsimile of letter 
from, asking for information, re- 
garding the dogs of Spain, from 
Borrow, 317-818. 

Death of Balder, The, translation by 
Borrow, 142, 295 ; issued by Jar- 
rold, 404. 

Deceived Merman, The, versions by 
Borrow and Matthew Arnold com- 
pared, 109-110. 

Defoe, Daniel, Borrow's master in 
literature, 40, 135, 346. 

Denuiss, Rev. E. P., aci-id corre- 
spondence between Borrow and, 
313. 

D'Eterville, Thomas, Borrow's 
teacher, 72-73. 

Diaz, Maria, Borrow'stribute to, 201. 

Dickens, Charles, 345. 

Dictionary of National Biography, 
article on Borrow in, 392. 

Donne, W. B., letters to Borrow, 
347, 361-362; awards high praise 
to Romany Rye and Lavengro, 347- 
348. 

Drake, William, description of 
Borrow by, 80. 

Duif-Gordon, Lady A., 64. 

Dumpling Green, birthplace of Bor- 
row, 1, 2, 37. 

Dutt, W. A., on Borrow and James 
Martineau, 75-76 ; on state of 
Oulton house after Borrow's death, 
414. 



E 



East Dereham, described in Laven- 
gro, 1, 38. 

Eastern Daily Press, The, ' George 
Borrow Reminiscences' published 
in, 416-420 ; Miss Harvey's letter 
on Borrow in, 309-311. 

Eastlake, Lady, her description of 
Borrow, 260-261. 

Edinburgh, childhood of Borrow in, 
45-49. 

Edinburgh Review, reviews Borrow's 
works, 227. 

Egan, Pierce, 121. 

Elwin, Rev. Whitwell, his esti- 
mate of Lavengro, 281, 283; his 
interview with, and impressions 
of. Borrow, 284-285; letters to 
Borrow from, 286-287 ; reviews 
Romany Rye in Quarterly Review, 
347 ; writes obituary of Bori-ow in 
Athenceum, 391. 

Enghien, Due d', trial of, included 
in Borrow's volumes, 113. 

English Gypsiet;, The, by Charles G. 
Leland,'233. 

Essays Critical and Historical, by J. 
H. Newman, quoted, 345. 

Examiner, The, at one time only 
paper read by Borrow, 402. 

Excursions along the Shores of the 
Mediterranean, attractive glimpse 
of Borrow in, 202-207. 



Fauntleroy, Henry, trial of, in- 
cluded in Borrow's volumes, 114- 
115. 

Faustus, translated by Borrow, 101- 
106, 112, 139, 140; burned by 
libraries of Norwich, 105 ; criti- 
cisms on, 106. 

Fell, Ralph, compiles memoirs of 
Phillips, 88. 

Fenn, Lady, commemorated by 
Cowper, and in Lavengro — books 
for children by, 38. 

Sir John, author of Paston 

Letters, 38. 

Fielding, what Borrow owed to, 346. 

Fig, James, 128. 

Findlater, Jane H., on the title of 
The Bible in Spain, 238. 



INDEX 



443 



FitzGerald, Edward, parallel between 
Borrow and, — works of, 350- 
351 ; character and gifts of, 351 ; 
marriage of, 352 ; letters to Bor- 
row, 351-355, 359-362 ; criticises 
Sorrow's expressions, 360. 

Footprints of George Borrow, by A. 
G. Jayne, 202. 

Ford, Richard, 227, 289 ; family 
history and fortune of, 248-249 ; 
anti-democratic outlook of, 249 ; 
his tribute to Borrow — reviews 
The Bible in Spain, 250 ; corre- 
spondence with the Borrows, 133, 
250-259 ; odd sentence referring 
to Borrow, in a letter of, 254 ; 
advice given to Borrow by, 148, 
276 ; his ideas about Lavengro, 
277 ; on The Zinca/i, 228, 229 ; his 
work, 133, 255, 257, 258. 

Sir Richard, creator of mounted 

police force of London, 248. 

Fox, Caroline, 159. 

Francis, John Collins, 400. 

Fraser's Magazine, Lavengro con- 
demned by, 278. 

French Prisoners of Norman Cross, 
The, by Rev. Arthur Brown, 40. 

Fry, Elizabeth, 65-66; connection 
of, with Bible Society, 155 ; the 
courtship of, 56-57. 



Garrick, David, 114. 

' George Borrow Reminiscences,' by 

S. H, Baldrey, quoted, 416-420. 
George Sorrow's Letters to the Bible 

Society, 162-163. 
George Borrow ; The Man and his 

Work, account of Borrow's Cornish 

journey in, 294. 
Gibson, Robin, 47. 
Gifford, William, 99 ; letter from, to 

Borrow, criticising a friend's play, 

410-412. 
Gill, Rev. W., letter to Borrow 

from, 301. 
Gypsies, language of, studied by Bor- 
row, 3, 4 ; Borrow's description of 

Hungarian, 265. 
Gladstone, W. E.,his admiration of 

The Bible in Spain, 313. 
Glen, William, Borrow's friendship 

with, 162-163. 



Gould, J. C, 85. 

Graydon, Lieutenant, a rival of Bor- 
row in Spain, 189 ; Borrow's at- 
tack upon, 191. 

Groome, Archdeacon, his memories 
of Borrow's schooldays, 80. 

F. H., gipsy scholar, 43; 

writes introduction to Lavengro, 
435 ; reviews Romano Lavo-Lil, 
232, 233-234 ; works of, 234. 

Grundtvig, Mr., Borrow's transla- 
tions for, 147, 149. 

Gully, John, career of, 131. 

Gunn, Rev. J., 414. 

Gurdons, the, subscribe to Borrow's 
' Romantic Ballads,' 110. 

Gurney, Miss Anna, letter from, to 
Mrs. Borrow, 240-241 ; Borrow 
cross-examined in Arabic by, 316. 

Daniel, 58. 

John, 55-56. 

Joseph John, connection of 

with great bank, 56-58 ; and with 
Bible Society, 155 ; his praise of 
Borrow, 179. 

Gurneys, the, at Norwich, 55-62 ; 
subscribe to Borrow's ' Romantic 
Ballads,' 110. 

Gurneys of Earlham, The, by A. J. C. 

Hare, quoted, 56. 
Gypsies of Spain, The. See Zincali, 
The. 

H 

Hackman, Parson, trial of, in Bor- 
row's volumes, 115. 

Haggart, David, 20 ; story of, 45-48 ; 
trial and execution of — verses 
written by, 49. 

Hake, Egmont, article of, in Diction- 
ary of National Biography, on 
Borrow, 392 ; his reminiscence of 
Borrow, 397. 

Dr. T. G., 74, 291 ; on Lavengro, 

278, 389, 390-391 ; his intimacy with 
Borrow, 389-397 ; relations of, with 
the Rossetti family, 389 ; asperities 
of, when speaking of Borrow, 391, 
392, 393 ; memoir of, in the Athen- 
ceum, 391. 

Hamilton, Duke of, 129. 

Handbook for Travellers in Spain, 
by Richard Ford, 133 ; Borrow's 
blundering review of, 255, 257 ; 
Maxwell's praise of, 258. 



444 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 



Hare, Augustus J, C, 56. 

Hares, the, 110, 

Harper, Lieutenant, 32. 

Harvey, Miss Elizabeth, her impres- 
sions of Borrow, 309-312 ; letters to 
Mrs. MacOubrey from, 429-481. 

Harveys, the, 110. 

Hasfeld, John P., 244, 289 ; Sorrow's 
correspondence with, 163-168 ; high 
praise of Targurn by, 408. 

Hawkes, Robert, 25, 111; painting 
of, 23-24. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, suggestion of, 
as to gypsv descent of Borrow, 6, 
12, 13. 

Haydon, Benjamin, 111 ; career of, 
24-27 ; correspondence of, with 
Borrow, 25, 135-136. 

Hayim Ben Attar, Moorish servant 
of Borrow, 197, 222 ; Sorrow's pre- 
cautions in repatriating, 306-309. 

Hazlitt, William, on prize-fighting, 
126-127. 

Heenan, pugilist, 128. 

Heme, Sanspirella, second wife of 
Ambrose Smith, 42-43. 

Hester, George P. , writes to Borrow 
on possible connection between 
Sclaves and Saxons, 348-349. 

Highland Society, the, Sorrow's pro- 
posal to, 136-137. 

Hill, Mary, 48. 

Historic Survey of German Poetry, by 
William Taylor, 68. 

History of the British and Foreign 
Bible Society, by William Canton, 
156. 

Hooper, James, letter from Professor 
Cowell to, 355-357. 

Howell, State Trials of, 112, 113. 

Howitt, Mary, her appreciation of 
Wild Wales, 369. 

Hudson, pugilist, 130. 

Hungary in 1851, glimpse of Borrow 
in, 264. 

Hunt, Joseph, trial and execution of, 
121-123. 

Hyde, Dr. Douglas, Irish scholar, 
51 ; success of Love Songs of Con- 
naught by, 408. 



Ida of Athens, judgment of Phillips 

on, 93. 
Illustrated London News, The, 94,' 



Sorrow's contribution to, on Runic 
stone, 301-303. 

Image, W. E., last survivor of Sor- 
row's schoolfellows, 77. 

In Gipsy Tents, by F. H. Groome, 
43. 

Ireland, Sorrow's early years in, 49- 
63 ; his feelings as regards people 
and language of, 296-297. 

Iris, The, editing of, 67. 



Jackson, John, pugilist, 127. 

Jane Eyre, cruelly reviewed by Lady 
Eastiake, 260. 

Jay, Elizabeth, on happy married life 
of the Borrows, 225. 

George, Borrow on yacht of, 

419-420. 

Jenkins, Mr. Herbert, 136, 148, 378, 
387, 415. 

Jerningham, Sir George, letter from, 
to Borrow, 198 ; Sorrow's com- 
plaints to, 212. 

Jessopp, Dr., on Sorrow as a pupil at 
the Grammar School, 72 ; his 
admiration of Borrow, 314-315. 

Joan of Arc, trial of, included in 
Sorrow's volumes, 113. 

Johnson, publisher, his offers for 
The Wild Irish Girl, 92. 

Catharine S., 361. 

Dr. Samuel, 114; on Ireland 

and Irish Literature, 51 ; his kind- 
ness for pugilists, 127. 

Tom, his fight with Brain, 

129. 

Lionel, his essay [on Borrow, 

435. 

Jones, Ellen, on Sorrow's pronuncia- 
tion of Welsh, 378. 

Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 41, 
44. 

Jowett, Rev. Joseph, Secretary of the 
Bible Society, 62 ; correspondence 
of, with Sorrow, 162, 170-171, 
176. 

Judgment of Solomon, painting by 
John Sorrow, 21. 

K 

Kcempe Viser, translation by Borrow, 

143-144. 
Keate, Dr., 174, 



INDEX 



445 



Kerrisou, Alladay, 84 ; invites Johu 
Borrow to join him in Mexico, 27. 

Rog'er, 84, 101 ; Borrow's corre- 
spondence with, 85, 153. 

Thomas, 84. 

Kett, Robert, 54. 

Kiyifls and Earls, unpublished work 
of Borrow, 404 ; merits of, 408. 

Kingsley, Charles, 345. 

King, Thomas, owner of the Borrow 
house in Willow Lane — descent of, 
from Archbishop Parker, 16-17. 

junior, career of — marries 

sister of J. S. Mill, — Burcham's 
allusion to, 16-17. 

Tom, conqueror of Heenan, 

128. 

Klinger, F. M. von, responsible for 
Borrow's first book — works of, 104. 

Kuapp, Dr., Life of Borrow by, 5 and 
passim ; purchases half the Borrow 
papers, 241. 



Lambert, Danikl, gaoler of Phillips, 
89. 

Lamplighter, racehorse, Borrow's 
desire to see, 316. 

Lang, Andrew, his onslaught on 
Borrow, 391. 

Laurie, Sir Robert, 17. 

Lavengro, appreciations of, 228-230, 
278, 389, 391 ; autobiographical 
nature of, 1, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 52, 
58-62, 81, 83-84, 96-97, 279, 285- 
286, 379 ; copies of, sold, 279, 287- 
288 ; criticisms and reviews of, 
278-279, 281, 347 ; Donne on some 
reviewers of, 361-362 ; facsimile 
of first manuscript page of, 282 ; 
greatness of, unrecognised in Bor- 
row's lifetime, 312-313 ; original 
manuscript title-page of, 280 ; pre- 
paration of manuscript of, 276-277; 
397; Thurtell referred to in, 116- 
117. 

Leicester Herald started by Phillips, 
88-89. 

Leland, Charles Godfrey, corre- 
spondence of, with Borrow, 230- 
232 ; his books — tribute to Borrow, 
233. 

Letters from Egypt, by Lady A. Duff- 
Gordon, 64. 



Letters from George Borrow to the Bible 
Society, 169, 162, 163, 169 ; valu- 
able information in, 180-181 ; in- 
teresting facts revealed in, 241-242 ; 
quoted, 174, 175. 

Letters ofBichard Ford, 248, 249 ; Bor- 
row's mistake in reviewing, 255. 

Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell, 
Borrow's story of the writing of, 
102. 

Life of Borrow, by Dr. Knapp, 5, 6, 
8, and passiin ; glimpse of Ann 
Perfrement's girlhood in, 13 ; 
gruesome picture of circumstances 
of Borrow's death — strongly de- 
nounced by Henrietta MacCiubrey, 
414. 

Life of B. R. Haydon, by Tom Taylor, 
*24, 25. 

Life of David Haggart , by himself, 
46. 

Life of Frances Power Cobbe as told by 
Herself, glimpses of Borrow in, 
383-384. 

Life of George Borrow, by Herbert 
Jenkins, 387, and passim ; valuable 
information in, 180-181 ; quoted, 
261, 378. 

Life of Howard, 90. 

Life of Sir James Mackintosh, quoted, 
64-65. 

Lights on Borrow, by Rev. A. Jes- 
sopp, D.D., quoted, 72. 

Lipoftsof, worker for Bible Society, 
169, 173. 

Literary Gazette, The, reviews of Bor- 
row's works in, 106, 227. 

Lloyd, Miss M.C., 383. 

Lofft, Capell, 90. 

Lopez, Eduardo, 202. 

.Juan, Borrow's tribute to, 201- 

202. 

Love Songs of C'onnaught, by Dr. 
Hyde, success of, 408. 

M 

Macaulay, Zachary, connection of, 

with Bible Society, 155. 
MacColl, Mr., 392." 
Mace, Jem, 128. 
Mackay, William, his impressions of 

Borrow related by, 316-317. 
MacOubrey, Dr., 335, 414, 415; 

status and accomplishments of, 



446 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 



420 ; pamphlets issued by, 421 ; 
illness and death of, 431-432. 

MacOubrey, Henrietta, 155, 195,216, 
363, and passirn ; on Borrow, 81 ; 
Sorrow's tribute to, in Wild Wales — 
her devotion to Borrow, 413 ; un- 
founded stories of her neglect of 
Bon-ow, 414-416; correspondence 
of, 421-431 ; death of — inscription 
on tomb of, 482 ; charitable be- 
quests of, 431-482. 

Man, Jsle of, Borrow's expedition to, 
296-308 ; his investigations into the 
Manx language, 298-299 ; the 
Runic stone, 300-303. 

Marie Antoinette, trial of, included 
in Borrow's volumes, 113. 

Martelli, C. F., his memories of 
Borrow, 86. 

Martineau, David, 63. 

Dr. James, on supposed gypsy 

descent of Borrow, 12-18 ; impres- 
sions of, as schoolfellow of Bor- 
row, 62, 71, 74-77. 

Gaston, 68. 

Harriet, 68 ; on Borrow's con- 
nection with the Bible Society, 
153-154. 

Matthew, Father, 66. 

Mavor, Dr., school-books issued by, 
94. 

Maxwell, Sir W. S., praises Ford's 
book, 258 ; criticises Lavengro, 
278. 

Meadows, Margaret, 68. 

Sarah, 63. 

Memoir of the Life and Writings of 
William Taijlor of Norwich, A, by 
J. W. Robbards,"66. 

Memoirs of Fifty Years, by T. G. 
Hake, 166, 390. 

Memoirs of John Venning, 160. 

Memoirs of Lady Morgan, quoted, 
62. 

Memoirs of the Public and Private Life 
of Sir Richard Phillips, 88. 

Memoirs' of Vidocq, translated by 
Borrow, 136. 

Mendizabal, Borrow's interview with, 
186, 214. 

Men of the Time, biographical drafts 
drawn up by Borrovr for, 3-5. 

Meyer, Dr. Kuno, Irish scholar, 51 ; 
work of, in Irish literature, 408. 

Mezzofanti, 209. 



Miles, H. D., his defence of prize- 
fighting, 127. 

Mill, John Stuart, Thomas King 
marries sister of, 16-17. 

Mitford, Miss, 25. 

Moira, Lord, 89. 

Mol, Benedict, 202, 239. 

Montague, Basil, his reference to 
Mrs. John Taylor, 64-65. 

Monthly Magazine, The, 67, 69, 90, 
113 ; Borrow's work on, 97. 

Moore, Thomas, 91. 

More Leaves from the Journal of a 
Life in the Highlands, visit to gypsy 
encampment described in, 48. 

Morgan, Lady, works of, published 
by Phillips, 91-93. 

Morrin, killed by David Haggart, 
48. 

Morris, Lewis, Welsh bard, 371. 

Sir Lewis, letter to Borrow, 

371-372. 

Mousehold Heath, historical and 
artistic associations of, 42, 54. 

Mousha, introduces Borrow to 
Taylor, 88 ; figures in Lavengro, 
88-84. 

Murray, John, publishes The Zincali, 
226-227 ; Borrow's relations with, 
342-343 ; correspondence of Bor- 
row with, 313, 342-348. 

Hon. R. D., 200. 

Murtagh, Irish friend of Borrow — 
figures in Lavengro, 49-52. 

Museum, The, 89. 

N 
Nantes, Edict of, Borrow's ancestors 

driven from France by Revocation 

of, 4, 12, 68. 
Napier, Admiral Sir C, 202. 
Col. E., 188; interesting 

account of Borrow by, 202-207. 
Nelson, Lord, a pupil of Norwich 

Grammar School, 71. 
Newgate Calendar, edited by Borrow, 

5, 112, 118. 
Neiogate Lives and Trials, Borrow's 

work on, 100. 
Newman, Cardinal, influenced to- 
wards Roman Catholicism by 

Scott, 845. 
New Monthly Magazine, The, 126. 
New Testament, edited by Borrow 

in Manchu and Spanish, 3. 



INDEX 



447 



Ney, Marshal, trial of, included in 
Sorrow's volumes, 113. 

Nicholas, Thomas, 293. 

Norfolk, Duke of, 89. 

Norman Cross, French prisoners at, 
7, 45 ; Borrovv's memories of, 40- 
45. 

Northern Skalds, unpublished work 
of Borrow, 404 ; merits of, 408. 

Norwich, 54, 86 ; Borrow's descrip- 
tion of, 82-83 ; satirised by Bor- 
row, 103. 

Novice, The, favourite book of 
William Pitt, 91-92. 



O 

O'CoNNELL, Daniel, Borrow's desire 

to see, 316. 
Olivei-, Tom, pugilist, 131. 
Once a Week, Borrow contributes to, 

387. 
Opie, Mrs., 56. 
Oracle, The, quoted, 129. 
Orford, Col. Lord, 27, 31 ; Ann 

Borrow's letter to, 33-34. 
Outlook, The, Lionel Johnson on 

Borrow in, quoted, 435-436. 
Overend and Gurney, banking firm, 

57-58. 
Owen, Goronwy, Borrow's favourite 

Welsh bard, 377-378, 407. 
Owenson, Sydney. See Morgan, 

Lady. 



Pahlin, 209. 

Painter, Edward, pugilist, 131. 

Palgrave, Sir Francis, letter to Bor- 
row from, 108. 

R. H. I., letters to Mrs. Mac- 

Oubrey from, 431. 

Palmer, Professor E. H., gypsy 
scholar, 232. 

Park, Mr. Justice, 123. 

Parker, Archbishop, pupil at Nor- 
wich Grammar School, 71. 

Archbishop (temp. Queen 

Elizabeth) descent of Thomas 
King from, 16. 

Paterson, John, work of, for Bible 
Society in Russia, 156. 

Pennell, Mrs. Elizabeth Robins, her 



biography of Leland, quoted, 230- 

231. 
Perfrement, Mary, grandmother of 

Borrow, 2, 13. 
Samuel, grandfather of Borrow, 

2, 12-13. 
Personal and Family Glimpses of 

Remarkable People, by E. W. 

Whately, quoted, 385. 
Peter Schlemihl, translated by Bow- 
ring, 141. 
Petrie, George, correspondence of 

Borrow with, 336-338. 
Phillips, Lady, 90. 
H. W., portrait of Borrow by, 

382. 
Sir Richard, 27, 69, 100 ; early 

days of, 87-88 ; imprisonment of. 

88-89 ; knighted, 94 ; books pub- 
lished by, 90-95 ; relations of, 

with Borrow, 96-100. 
Phrenological Observations, etc., by 

George Combe, 46. 
Picts, the. Borrow on, 336-337. 
Pilgrim, John, Borrow's visits to, 

417-420. 
Pinkerton, literary hack, 88. 
Pischel, Professor Richard, criticises 

Borrow's etymologies, 344. 
Playfair, Dr., 387. 
Pope, influence of, on Borrow, 407. 
Pott, Dr. A. F., gypsy scholar, 232, 

233. 
Prayer Book and Homily Society, 

Borrow's correspondence with, 

176-177. 
Prize-fighting, Borrow's taste for, 11, 

82, 126-132. 
Probert, witness against Thurtell, 

121. 
Prothero, Rowland E., 248, 249. 
Purcell, pugilist, 130-131. 
Purland, Francis, companion of 

Borrow in schoolboy escapade, 73- 

75. 

Theodosius, 73-75. 

Pushkin, Alexander, Russian poet, 

translated by Borrow, 178. 



Q 



luarterly Review, The, review of 
Lavengro in, 281 ; of Romany Rye 
in, 347. 



448 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 



R 

Rackham, Tom, 79. 

Rackhams, the, 110. 

Raising of Lazarus, picture by Hay- 
don, 24. 

Randall, pugilist, 130. 

Reay, Martha, murdered by Hack- 
man, 115. 

' Recollections of George Borrow,' 
by A. Egmont Hake in Athenceum, 
quoted, 397. 

Reeve, Mr., on scene in Oulton 
house after Sorrow's death, 
414. 

Henry, C4. 

Res JudicatcB, by Augustine Birrell, 
436. 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 114. 

Richmond, pugilist, 130. 

Legh, connection of, with Bible 

Society, 155. 

Rights of Man, Phillips charged with 
selling, 89. 

Robbards, J. W., writes memoir of 
William Taylor, 65-66. 

Robertson, George, 47. 

Romance of Bookselling, by Mumby, 
87. 

Romano Lavo-Lil, manuscript of, 
295 ; published by Murray, 404 ; 
reviews of, 232, 233, 234, 361. 

Romantic Ballads, translation from 
the Danish by Borrow, 106-111, 
112,139, 140.' 

Romany Rye, The, 4, 125, 141-142, 
305; appreciations of, 228-230, 
234-235, 349, 354, 391; autobio- 
graphical nature of, 279-280, 286- 
286 ; Borrow embittered by failure 
of, 347; characters in, 343; de- 
fects of Appendix, 344-345 ; fac- 
simile of page of manuscript of, 
346 ; identification of localities of, 
343-344 ; philological criticism 
of, 344 ; preparation of manu- 
script of, 341; quoted, 189 ; re- 
views of, 347, 349. 

Ross, Janet, 64. 

Rowe, Quartermaster, 17. 

Rubdiyat, Fitzgerald's paraphrase, 
350 ; quoted in original and trans- 
lated, 35.3-354 ; Tennyson's eulogy 
of, 358. 

Rye, Walter, 119. 



St. Petersburg, Borrow in, 162- 
178. 

Sampson, John, eminent gypsy ex- 
pert — extraordinary suggestion of, 
regarding Borrow, 343 ; criticises 
Borrow's etymologies, 344. 

Sam the Jew, pugilist, 130. 

Samuel, A. M., Lord Mayor of Nor- 
wich — presents Borrow house to 
Norwich, 16. 

Sayers, Dr., 64. 

Tom, pugilist, 130. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 68 ; Borrow's pre- 
judice against, 19, 108,344; influ- 
ence of, on J. H. Newman, 345 ; 
Taylor's influence on, 66 ; interest 
of, in Thurtell's trial, 121; writ- 
ings of, admired by Borrow, 344. 

Scroggins, pugilist, 130. 

Seccombe, Thomas, introduction to 
Lavengro by, 125, 435. 

Servian Popular Poetry, by Bowring, 
140. 

Sharp, Granville, connection with 
Bible Society of, 155. 

Shaw, G, B., his kindness for the 
pugilist, 127. 

Shelton, pugilist, 130. 

Sidney, Algernon, trial of, included 
in Borrow's volumes, 113. 

Sigerson, Dr., Irish scholar, 51; suc- 
cess of Bards of the Gael and Gaul, 
by, 408. 

Simeon, Charles, connection with 
Bible Society of, 165. 

Simpson, William, Borrow articled to, 
79-81; described by Borrow, 80- 
81. 

Skepper, Anne, 157, 215, 216, 219. 

Breame, 156, 157, 219. 

Edmund, 216, 219. 

Edward, 167. 

Sleeping Bard, The, translation by 
Borrow, 137; his mistakes in, 367; 
refused by publishers, 322, 402, 
404, 406, 408, 410 ; printed at his 
own expense, 322. 

Smiles, Samuel, on publication of 
The Zincali, 226-227. 

Smith, Ambrose, the Jasper Petulen- 
gro of Lavengro, 41-46. 

Faden, 42. 

Thomas, 44.3 



INDEX 



449 



Sonys from Scandinavia, translation 
by Borrow^ 13G ; prospectus of, 
145 ; future publication of, 40G- 
407 ; page of manuscript of, 411. 

Songs of Europe, metrical translation 
by Borrow, 294, 404. 

Songs of Scotland, by Allan Cunning- 
ham, Borrow's appreciation of, 

loy. 

Southey, Robert, affection of, for 
VV^illiam Taylor, 66 ; on death of 
Taylor, 69. 

Spalding, Frederick, 851. 

Spectator, The, point of view of criti- 
cism of Borrow of, 437 ; reviews 
Wild Wales, 367. 

Sphere, The, article on Borrow and 
Martiueau in, 75-76. 

State Trials, 112-113. 

Stephen, Sir J. Fitzjames, 217. 

Sir Leslie, 99. 

Stevenson, R. L., perfunctory refer- 
ences to Borrow in writings of, 
436. 

Stoddard, Mr., Burcham's reference 
to, 17. 

Story, A. T., reminiscences of Bor- 
row by, 385-387. 

Struensee, Count, trial of, included 
in Borrow's volumes, 113. 

Stuart, Mrs. James, 73. 

Suffolk, Duke of, 64. 

Summers, William, 184. 

Swan, Rev. William, 169. 



Talisman, The, translation by Borrow, ! 
178. 

Targum, translation by Borrow, 3, 
297; high praise of, 165-166, 177, 
178, 408 ; facsimile of a poem 
from, 403. 

Taylor, Anne, describes Borrow's 
appearance, 293. 

Baron, Borrow's meeting with, 

210. 

Dr. John, 63. 

John, 63. 

Mrs. John, 55 ; Basil Mon- 
tague on, 64-65. 

Richard, 63. 

Robert, 293. 

Tom, author of Life of B. R. 

Uaydon, 24, 25. 



Taylor, William, 55, 70 ; dialogue in 
Liwengro between Borrow and, 8-9, 
83-34 ; gives Borrow lessons in 
German, 81-82 ; gives Borrow in- 
troductions to Phillips and Camp- 
bell, 84 ; his love of paradox, 76 ; 
influence of, on Borrow, 65 ; 
Harriet Martineau on, 65-66 ; his 
friends and literary work, 66-69 ; 
correspondence with Southey, 67- 
68 ; his testimony to Borrow's 
knowledge of German, 101. 

Taylors, the, at Norwich, 55, 63-69. 

Tennyson on enthusiasm for Lycidas, 
278 ; his eulogy of FitzGerald's 
translation of the Rubdiydt, 358. 

Thackeray, W. M., Borrow's attitude 
towards, 347, 393 ; on Edward 
FitzGerald, 351 ; Hake's severe 
reference to, 393. 

Theodore Wutts-Dunton : Poet, Novel- 
ist, Critic, by James Douglas, 
quoted, 394. 

Thompson, T. W., article of, on 
Jasper Petulengro, 44. 

W. H.,357. 

Three Generations of Englishwomen, 
by Janet Ross, 64. 

Thurtell, Alderman, 120, 125. 

John, 82, 111 ; trial of— 

glimpses of, in Borrow's books, 
116-125 ; great authors who have 
commented on crime of, 118. 

Timbs, John, 111 ; stories told by, 

94, 95. 
i.'oin of Bedford, pugilist, 131. 

freve. Captain, 17. 

Turkish Jester, The, by Borrow, 295 ; 
issued by Webber, 404. 

Turner, Dawson, 243, 279. 

Ned, pugilist, 130. 

Twelve Essays on the Phenome7in of 
Nature, Phillips anxious to produce 
in a German dress, 96. 

Twelve Essays on the Proximate 
Causes, Borrow unable to translate 
into German — published in Ger- 
man, 99. 

U 

Universal Review, The, 99 ; Borrow's 
work on, 97. 

Upcher, A. W., contributes remin- 
iscences of Borrow to the Athen- 
(putn, 316. 



2f 



450 GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE 



Usdz y Rio,Don Luis de, letters from^ 
to Borrow, 207-209. 

V 

Valpy, Rev. E., Bor row's school- 
master — story of Borrow being 
flogged by, 73-78. 

Venning, John, work of, in Russia — 
befriends Borrow, lGO-161. 

Victoria, Queen, visits gypsy encamp- 
ment, 43. 

Vidocq, 261 ; memoirs of, translated 
by Borrow, 13G. 

W 

Wahrheit und Dichtnng, opening lines 
of, compared with those of Luven- 
gro, 1. 

Walks and Talks about London, 94 ; 
story told of Phillips in, 95. 

Walling, R. A. J., biography of 
Borrow by, 294-295. 

Walpole, Horace, on Mr. Fenn, 39. 

Wanton, S. W., letter to Borrow 
from, 299-300. 

Waterfield, Mrs., 04. 

Watts-Dunton, Theodore, criticism 
of Borrow's work, 847, 392; de 
scription of personal appearance of 
Borrow, 397-398 ; friendship witli 
Borrow, 317 ; on intimacy between 
Borrow and Hake, 389-391 ; in- 
troduction to Lavengj-o by, 435, 
436 ; on Borrow's loyalty in friend- 
ship, 312 ; on poetic gifts of Bor- 
row, 406 ; reminiscences of Borrow, 
398-400 ; sonnet written by, 400. 

Weare pamphlets, 120-121. 

William, murder of, 121, 122. 

Webber, Borrow's books bought by. 
414. 

Westminster Reinew, 140. 

Whately, Archdeacon, description 
of Borrow by, 385. 



Whewell, Dr., 285. 

Wilberforce, William, connection of, 
with Bible Society, 165. 

Wilcock, Rev. J., his impressions of 
Borrow, 338-339. 

Wild Irish Girl, The, the publication 
of, 91, 92. 

Wild Wales, 4, 6, 221, 383, 413; 
appreciations of, 356,360,369,372- 
373 ; comparative failure of, 367, 
373 ; comparison of, with Borrow's 
three other great works, 376-377 ; 
facsimiles of two pages from Bor- 
row's pocket-books, and of title- 
page of manuscript, 365, 368 ; 
high spirits of, 378 ; Lope de 
Vega's ghost-story referred to in, 
369 ; reviews of, 367 ; time taken 
to write, 366. 

Wilhelm Meister, quoted, 154. 

William Bodhnm Donne and his 
Friends, Borrow described in, 361. 

Williams, Lieutenant, 32. 

— - J. Evan, letter from Bor- 
row to, on similarity of some 
Sclavonian and Welsh words, 369- 
371. 

^Volcot, Dr., 90. 

Woodhouses, the. 111. 

Wordsworth, Borrow's estimate of, 
346-347. 

Wormius, Olaus, 82. 

Wright, Dr. Aldis, 357, 363. 



Voting Cottager, The, by Legh Rich- 
mond, extraordinary voque of, 97. 



Zincali, The, work by Borrow, 3, 4, 
42, 118 ; reference to Borrow's 
travels in, 135 ; criticisms of, 227- 
229 ; number of copies of, sold, 
244 ; editions of, issued, 226-227. 



Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
at the Edinburgh University Press 



